Acolyte
by wingedraksha
Summary: You have nothing. They offer you everything. There's only one question... What will you sacrifice? Jonda, Evo-prequel
1. John

**A/N: Hey, all. This is going to be an epic ride, hopefully, and I'd love to have you with me the whole way. A few notes before we begin: there will be no ROMY in this story. Not because I don't love it, not because I won't write it, but because the storyline does not allow for it. If all goes well and there's a sequel, that will be chock_full_ of ROMY, so please be patient about that. Also, this is not a fluffy piece. I will say that again: THIS IS NOT A FLUFFY PIECE. It is plot-driven, though there will be some pretty intense romance once things get going, so don't be alarmed at angst and violence along the way. Ok, let's rock and roll.**

-1: JOHN-

The plane bumped when it touched down, and the people in the body of it rocked forwards and settled. It taxied, turning widely, guided by glowing strips that shone like white gold in the dark. Inside, a woman with a little girl whispered something about the Empire State Building, and a man with a laptop coughed loudly two rows back. In the last row, scrunched up against the tiny panel of window with his legs painfully compressed by the seat in front of him, a lanky young man with a spiky shock of reddish blond hair and fine, angular features rubbed his eyes awake. Blue eyes, very bright, cut through the dim airplane lighting and flashed, the only movement in his still face, across his fellow passengers to rest on the exit sign towards the front cabin.

"Ladies and gentlemen," a distant, vaguely accented voice announced over the loudspeaker, "we've arrived in New York City right on schedule. The time is 11:34 PM, and it is a balmy 62 degrees. Please wait until the seatbelt signs above your seats are turned off before retrieving your carry-on luggage. On behalf of United Airlines, I hope you enjoyed your flight, and that you'll fly with us again soon." There was a pause, a dull waiting silence, and then the seatbelt light dinged off and there came a rush of motion that swept the plane.

St. John Allerdyce, who was called John or Johnny by those who knew him, and Saint by several smartass teachers, waited for the commotion to die down before unfolding his legs and, carefully, standing. He had been on that plane for hours, more hours than he cared to acknowledge, and the act of sitting still for such an awful length of time had numbed him, whittled him down to a near stupor. Standing sent blood rushing to places it hadn't been in ages (not as long as he thought, but longer than could possibly be healthy), and he almost smashed his head against the ceiling out of sheer dizzy vertigo. He managed, though, to step out from the seat area and to reach up into the ceiling compartment where his duffel bag lay. Inside this bag, knocking around with an extra pair of jeans and a few shirts, were several things: a wallet, not his own, with maybe three hundred dollars in cash; a passport, also not technically his own; a small wooden box containing a stack of Polaroid photographs, two fine charcoal pencils and a sharpener; and, hidden inside a cheap plastic case meant for a retainer, two equally cheap plastic dime store lighters. These were John's sole belongings, even those that were not strictly his, and they were the only things he brought with him from dusty, hot, crowded, glorious Australia.

Last in the line of passengers filing off the plane and into the free-standing tunnel that lead into the terminal, John was eyed by the pretty girl who pushed the cart of drinks all the way to the back before awkwardly turning around and returning the way she had come. He gave her a smile, his best oh-so-wicked grin, the sort of smile that tells a girl she just might be in trouble but she can bet it'll be the kind she'll enjoy, and she blushed attractively as he passed. He didn't look back at her, and as soon as he was in the tunnel he forgot her completely.

Slinging the duffel bag over his shoulder as he entered the terminal in New York, John inhaled as deeply as he could. His legs ached from the flight, his back was sore from the unforgiving seat, and his eyes hurt from gritty halfsleep… but he was here, in America, breathing United States air. When he reached Customs and was asked to pull out his professionally faked passport, John didn't even flinch.

It wasn't until he was outside of the airport, which was difficult enough considering the uncomfortable crush of humanity that seemed to fold in on itself as soon as he left the relative safety of the Customs hall, that John felt the first twinge of fear. Again, the thought came: he was here, in America… and he had absolutely nowhere to go. Three hundred dollars was all he was worth here, three hundred dollars and a bag of useless shite.

At that, John smiled reflexively. Useless to everyone else, perhaps, but certainly not useless to him. Moving to stand beneath the alcove of the airport building, John rifled through his bag until he found the retainer case. Without removing the case from the bag or the bag from his shoulder, he slipped a thumb under the plastic lid and popped it up, tipping one of the lighters out into his hand. It felt warm, and hard, and small, ridiculously so. Still, it comforted him, and he drew it out and zipped up the bag with a low sigh.

"Hey!" He didn't notice at first, didn't hear, but then the shout came again and was more pointed. "Hey, kid! You looking for a ride?" John glanced over to the street, where a man with dark hair and dark eyes leaned out the window of a yellow cab. John straightened, gripping the lighter a bit more closely, and strolled over as casually as he could. No good to look unstable, here, now; no good at all. He got into the cab and pulled the door shut hard behind him, sliding over to where a seatbelt lay across the faux-leather like a dead snake. The cabbie settled back into his seat and eyed John through the rearview mirror. He had a faint scar just above one eyebrow; John couldn't tell if it was the left or the right. He couldn't remember which way mirrors distort things.

"Where to, my friend?"

"Cheapest pub you know, mate," John said, buckling himself in. The cabbie raised the scarred brow.

"You of age for that? Not that I care, mind you, but-" He broke off as John frowned, then realized.

"Oh. No. Pub, like, hotel," he clarified, having forgotten that, being in America, his language would betray him. Somehow, that thought stung John more than he'd expected and he had to clear his throat to make it go away. The cab driver nodded, comprehension making the brow fall back into place, and peeled away from the long line of taxis idling at the curb.

"What are you, Australian?"

"Yeah," John said shortly, because although he felt the question, and therefore the answer, to be unnecessary, he knew that not answering would probably annoy the driver. Ordinarily he wouldn't care, but he was too tired and too on-edge to deal with antagonism at the moment. Thankfully, the cabbie didn't ask anything else. Maybe it was the way John lets his head fall back against the seat and closes his eyes, or maybe it was just a New York sort of thing, but the rest of the drive was made in silence.

The cabbie dropped him off in front of a line of buildings all cramped into one narrow block, graffiti spilling down from the bricks onto the uneven pavement of the sidewalk. The vertical sign hanging from the panel of one building-front read 'La Belle Hotel', which made John smile faintly just because of the rhyme. He paid the driver and got out, stumbling over a jutting piece of broken concrete where something once smashed into the sidewalk. Catching his balance almost as quickly as he lost it, John hitched his duffel bag higher on his shoulder and strode up to the red door beneath the sign. The paint on the door was clean and fairly fresh, which seemed to be a good omen. He pushed it open and walked into a tiny lobby where a man barely older than John himself sat behind a blockaded desk with his feet on a line of shelves, watching a miniature television and sipping at a can of soda. When John entered, the man took his feet down but didn't let go of the drink.

"Help you?" he asked, not really looking up.

"How much for the night?"

"Thirty-five." John had $285 left after his cab ride. He took out his wallet and slapped a hundred dollar bill on the counter.

"As many as that'll buy me, then," he said. The man, whose nametag, John saw, read 'Edward', placed a hand on the bill and slid it across the dark wood until it fell off the other side and presumably into his lap. He did look at John then, sizing him up. John wondered what exactly Edward was seeing. Tall, just barely heavy enough to be considered lean instead of thin, exhausted wary face and messy bright hair. He didn't bother smiling.

"We've got a special for over two nights," Edward informed him lazily, bored with his inspection. He typed something into the computer on the lower level of the desk and a drawer sprung open with a snap. He dropped in the bill. "Takes the rate down to twenty bucks per. So this can get you five nights, as long as you're out by noon on…" He paused, craning his neck around to look at the tattered wall calendar behind him, "Saturday."

"Great," John said absently, already thinking of a mattress and a pillow and, dear god, just some real, worthwhile _sleep_.

"Name?" He almost said Allerdyce, but caught himself in time.

"Layman," he said instead, his accent making it sound like Lie-man. He had to spell it for Edward, who seemed to be the kind of person who types very slowly and has trouble actually reading the keys. "John Layman." Edward finished, and then asked for a form of picture ID. When John pulled out his passport for the second time that evening, Edward didn't check the photograph. He just keyed something in, handed the passport back, and spun away from the computer to slam his feet once again onto the shelves.

"Right-o, pal," he said, reaching under the desk and coming up with an old-fashioned metal key. "You're room 13-B, one flight up." He chuckled. "Lucky number thirteen, huh?" John took the key without responding, and made his way to the elevator in the corner of the lobby. He rode it up leaning hard against the wall, because he'd never liked elevators, never liked being in such a small compartment where something like, say, a fire, would trap him there for ages. There was a song stuck in his head now, a little ditty that he used to sing with his brother when they were just tykes. He shook it away and got out of the elevator when it stopped, rickety and uncertain, at the second floor. Room 13-B was just down the hall, between two other doors. John locked the door behind him, dropped his bag on the floor and fell onto the bed without a second thought.

……….

In the morning, it was cool. He didn't expect it, so the chill in the air roused him, light and soft and strange against his cheeks and arms. He was still on top of the covers, sprawled in an ungainly diagonal across the mattress, the side of one hand pleasantly numbed by the angle of his opposite elbow pressed against the wrist. John sat up, supporting himself with his fully-awake hand, and shook out the sleeping one until the numbness shot through with sharp tingles that sparkled through the muscle and bone until, with a final convulsive shudder, he was fine.

For the first time, John looked around the room.

It was bigger than he might have thought, when he first saw the hotel. Maybe a solid fifteen feet across, twenty wide. There was the bed, which had a high wooden headboard and was fairly comfortable, and a dresser drawer across the room with a staring black television sitting atop it, and a desk with a phone, a pad of paper and a few cheapo ballpoint pens. He figured that the door to the right of the bed probably lead to a bathroom, which, when he dragged himself up and out and across, turned out to be small but functional. There was one window in this room, and it looked out on tight, dirty, fantastically-imagined buildings that encroached on each other like impatient oozing bricks of mud and loomed over the narrow busy street in a near-ominous fashion. He smiled. In short, the room was wonderful.

A phone rang, sharp and startling in the quiet, and John froze. His breath caught, and fear cut him, glassy, harsh, fragile breaking shards of it making each heartbeat hurt. Then he remembered that he was in New York, and that no one here knew him, and that even if they did they didn't know his real name, and it was just the hotel phone on the desk, anyway. He walked over, still in his sneakers from last night, and answered.

"Hello?"

"Mister, ah, Layman, we do a breakfast here that I forgot to tell you about." It was Edward from the concierge, which, he recalled absently, was the word for such things. "It's just past eleven, so you've got about half an hour before the buffet closes."

"That's included in whatever I paid last night?"

"Sure. Nothing special, just, like, your eggs and your sausage, but. It's in the café downstairs." Edward hung up, and John hung up, too. He stared at the phone for an instant, and then glanced at his watch. Sure enough, it was 11:02 in the morning. He'd slept for over ten hours, which was longer than he'd slept in what felt like years. It occurred to him that he had been on a day-long plane trip the day before, and that he'd slept in his clothes and his shoes, and that before that he hadn't showered in forty-eight hours, and John ducked into the bathroom without even grabbing for his bag of clothes.

He stripped awkwardly, trying to avoid hitting his elbows or his knees against the counter with the inlaid sink or the toilet directly across from it, and piled his clothing on top of his sneakers in the corner between the door and the wall. There were two thin white towels on a rack above the toilet and no bath mat, so he took one of the towels and spread it out in front of the shower, which was the kind with a yellowish plastic curtain around a whitish plastic base. These kinds of things, he noted, are always something-_ish_, never quite a distinct color all their own. The water, when he figured out how to use the push-pull-twist-turn on/off mechanism, came out freezing cold and then scorching hot. He waited for a happy medium, and then stepped in and just stood beneath the hard spray with his face angled up, letting the water pelt across it until he thought his features must have been erased. At that point, John lowered his head and ran his hands through his hair, slicking it back against his skull. He opened his eyes, blinking away the water, and squinted at the tray sticking out of the shower wall. There were two little bottles of hair product sitting there, unopened: one thick and green, one clearer. He washed his hair with them and then looked for the soap, remembered that this was a hotel and so there was probably a small cardboard-encased brick sitting on the sink, and decided it wasn't worth getting out for.

When he was clean and his digital, waterproof watch told him that it was now 11:16 AM, John got out of the shower and used the second towel to dry himself off, wrapping it around his waist and stepping out of the bathroom to find new clothes.

John found the café, as Edward called it, with relative ease. Going down, he took the stairs instead of the elevator and had to squeeze past an elderly woman with strangely coiffed hair who glared at him with silent, weighty disapproval as he ducked around the corner of the landing. She lingered on his paint-stained Rolling Stones shirt, and he gave her a cheeky wave before immediately regretting it. It is not low profile to make a bad impression with your housemates. He imagined her talking to police, blue-suited clockwork men with melted, impossible faces and buzzing wasp-voices, saying _Yes, yes, little bastard, gave me lip, he did. _

The café, which was through a door on the opposite side of the lobby, was a plain hexagonal room with an unfortunate shade of maroon carpeting and a scatter of small round tables. There was a long buffet counter against one wall, covered with a sheet and laid with several large metal vats. There was no one else in the room, for which John was distinctly grateful. He wandered over to the buffet, and looked it over. Scrambled eggs, as promised (sickly yellow mush, but still); a pile of bacon in long, curling strips; something he could only assume was meant to be hash browns. They were brown and hashed, anyway. John picked up a plate, tapped the hard plastic edge against the tipped-up lid of the vat of eggs, and scooped some of each onto the dish. At the end of the counter, there was a cooler filled with mostly-melted ice. From that, John took a small elementary-school-sized carton of white milk.

He sat in the corner farthest from the door, so he could see anyone who should happen to enter. Not wasting time to prod at the food, however dubious it may have been, John ate his breakfast and considered. He needed work, was what he needed. Something vague and anonymous, something that would pay well enough to keep him off the streets but not well enough to give him a face here. He didn't know how things worked in New York, in America, but he didn't think chances should be taken. Not those kind of chances, anyway. Then, annoyed, John mentally smacked himself for the specification. _No chances_, he thought firmly, and drank the carton of milk. _Especially not those._

In Australia, John had worked at a university library. He shelved the books and fixed small computer problems that popped up, and was generally well-liked by the librarians. They found his enthusiasm charming, his occasional depression worthy of a kiss on the cheek and a chocolate bar; it wasn't until it got out, what he was, that they realized that his enthusiasm was threatening and his occasional depression even more so. John resented them for that, because he'd been able to be fairly normal at the library and when they started treating him like a pariah, that one slice of regular interaction in his life had died without a fight. He did feel mildly guilty, though, for leaving as suddenly as he had. But circumstance, of course, had necessitated that particular social faux-pas.

So those were his skills: understanding the decimal system, tinkering with electronic devices until, most of the time, they worked again. He could write, too, and he could draw adequately, but none of these really leant themselves to steady work. He sighed, and reached into the pocket of his jeans where one of the plastic lighters- the red one- waited. He could feel it whispering to him, now that he was safe and almost relaxed and not hungry or tired, and he wished it were a real lighter, but understood it would never have gotten on the plane.

Maybe restaurant work. He could wait tables, surely? If he could surround himself with all that flammable material in Sydney without incident, then he could deal with impatient bastards in New York. John got up, leaving his empty plate on the table, and walked out of the room and past the desk where a different young man lounged, leaving the hotel and shoving his hands in his pockets. He liked to at least hold onto the lighter, even if he couldn't actually use it.

The road was flanked with parked cars, and he was startled by the sheer _noise_ of it all. Going outside was like exiting a bubble, and suddenly there were screeching tires and shouting women and music blaring, construction sounds crashing against car horns in a blurry cacophony. He blocked it out, always good at that, and turned right. In his pockets, the room key clanked against the lighter, his fingers brushing against the wallet on the other side.

It wasn't hard, actually, finding a job. In fact, in this one instance, John thought that maybe he'd been blessed. There was a restaurant a few blocks down, a small place that served Italian and salads, and a man with a thick Irish accent hired him almost on the spot. The man, whose name was Jacky Finney, always both names in a quick run-together stream, clapped John on the back hard enough that he staggered, and laughed. He had a deeper laugh than voice.

"You have that look about you, boy," he told John, who didn't quite know how to react to this. Jacky Finney didn't elaborate, and set John to clearing off the little square tables without giving him any papers to sign. John understood that he would be paid in cash, and that there would be no record. He took the dishes from the tables and put them in the kitchen behind the counter where food was ordered from, where a girl with an exquisite set of blond dreads worked the cooking counters. Then he wiped the tables down as Jacky Finney talked to customers, and then he washed the dishes while the blond girl hummed to herself. She turned, having found a break in her rhythm, and stared at him.

"What's after _you_?" she asked bluntly, and John met her eyes. He didn't answer. After a moment, she shook her head. "Clarissa," she said, and didn't hold out a hand.

"John." Because she was a girl and quite pretty, really, and because she was no longer looking at him so searchingly, he smiled at her. "Nice hair." Clarissa snorted and turned back to her stove, where she began to do something complicated with a pile of dough.

And this, then, is how it went for a week or two. John moved in tight, practiced circles: bed to shower, shower to breakfast, breakfast to work, work to dinner, dinner to bed. He didn't eat enough, he suspected, but that was okay because he'd never needed that much food anyway. Besides, not eating made things easier on him. It kept his mind on the fact that he was hungry, or tired, or both, rather than on the fact that he was surrounded by humans and he hadn't _done_ anything since what happened in Australia. That was taxing, was the truth, more than he liked to admit. In the moments when he really had nothing else to occupy his attention, as the days stretched longer, John found himself jittery and on edge, playing with things near his hands and unable to concentrate. He wanted to burn something. He needed to burn something. It was a compulsion, a desire fiercer than he knew how to articulate, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could hold out being so, so good.

John didn't like the idea of being controlled by his power, of being helpless against its seductive pull. In fact, at the moment, he was trapped in a sick love-hate relationship with it, and he knew it. Without this thing, this hot wild crazy thing in him, none of what had happened over the past month would have happened at all. He would still be in Australia, working at the library, maybe saving up for proper university. Hell, he might even still be at home, with his family, instead of exiled not just from their house but from the town he was born in.

But no. The power was there, and he couldn't deny it, much as he liked to try sometimes. And, when he got right down to it, he would _never_ choose to rid himself of it. It was part of him, and sometimes it was nearly all of him, and being anything else was impossible to imagine. Besides, John told himself briskly, he might still be in this situation even as a human. After all, Ed Bailey was no more special than the next boring flatline, and without him the heist never would have taken off.

Sometimes he worked late, closing up the restaurant (which, he registered only after getting the job, was called Finney's Finest), and these times he generally ended up talking to Jacky Finney and Clarissa. There was another man who worked occasionally, but it was mostly just the three of them. He found out that Clarissa was a graduate student at New York University, and studying film. They both found out that Jacky Finney had a wife who enjoyed being surprised with the small, ornately painted flat stones that Jacky Finney made during his free time. Clarissa and the Irishman found out nothing about John, except for the fact that he was obviously Australian and was not close to his parents.

On one such evening, while John swept the floor and Clarissa scrubbed the order counter, Jacky Finney banged out of his side office and held up his hands in triumph. They looked at him, pausing.

"I got it!" he declared, and strode over to grab John's hand and pump it vigorously. John blinked at him, and smiled uncertainly.

"Got… what, mate?" From the counter, Clarissa heaved a loud sigh.

"He means he got a gallery spot. For his little colored rocks." Jacky Finney broke off his handshake with John and turned to her, aghast.

"My 'little colored rocks'? Oh, lass, and you're meant to be an artist!"

"I'm not an artist," she objected, balancing the rag with which she was wiping on one extended index finger and twirling it until it wrapped around her hand. "I do movies."

"Film is art," Jacky Finney protested. He looked at John for backup, and Clarissa cleared her throat in an unsubtle warning. John looked from one to the other, opened his mouth, and then-- stopped. He felt his heart slowing, the air around him solidifying until each movement seemed to shake the room. He could _feel_ it… and it was _close_.

"What?" Clarissa asked, frowning. "What's wrong?" John's heart sped up now, the recognition giving way to an almost feverish, disbelieving excitement. Without bothering to answer (what, couldn't she tell? Couldn't she smell it, hear it, _sense_ it?), he dropped the broom and went to the front door. Clarissa hoisted herself over the counter and dropped down on the other side, catching Jacky Finney by the elbow and pulling him along as she followed John outside.

It was closer than he'd dared hope, closer than he ever would have dreamed.

In fact, it was right next door.

"Fecking hell," Jacky Finney breathed, and Clarissa just stared.

The club directly to their left, which John had seen, of course, but never tried to enter, was on fire.

**Please let me know what you think!**


	2. LeBeau

_Translations:_

_Un ami de feu, je vois - A friend of fire, I see  
_

_Nous devons nous rencontrer correctement - We must meet properly  
_

_homme - man_

_tu sais - you know_

_mes/mon ami(s) - my friend(s)_

**-2: LEBEAU-**

It was as if someone had doused the building with kerosene and lit not one match, but two dozen. There didn't seem to be any clear origin, and there didn't seem to be any clear end; the flames were everywhere. A window exploded, showering glass and burning bits of wood down onto the pavement below. The shatter seemed to break not only the glass but the awful, rapt silence of the onlookers, and all at once the street broke into screams. There was a flood of people leaving the club, piling on top of each other to get out, lying on the sidewalk and coughing up fresh air as sparks leapt out to follow them. Clarissa turned on her heel and raced back into Finney's Finest, going for the phone. Jacky Finney jogged towards the club, elbowing his way through the crowd of watching strangers to get to the front of the building. He helped a girl to her feet and gripped her by the shoulders, and John could hear him yelling a question. He vaguely understood that Jacky Finney was asking if there was anyone else trapped inside, but only distantly, as if the words were in a language he wasn't quite fluent in.

The flames were beautiful. Oh, god, they were beautiful, every hot burning deadly lovely color that existed snaking around each other and eating up the world. He was transfixed, and then he was walking towards the fire, keeping close to the storefront of the restaurant, hands held out like a bum towards a burning trashcan. He made it dance for him, not feeling the heat, not hearing the man who shouted at him to stay back, not noticing the flying shard of broken wood that glanced off his left shoulder and left a bleeding skidmark there. He wanted to walk into the fire, to be surrounded by it, to close his eyes and let it consume everything around him until there was nothing left.

He made it to the very edge of the flames, where they were catching on the strip of weedy pavement between the club and Finney's Finest, and they roared up to greet him like lovers after a long separation.

And that was when John heard the shriek.

There were many screams, of course, slicing through the air. There was the hungry growl of the fire, and the shouts of those trying to find people or help them, and the cries of the ones who've gotten burned. But this was different. This wasn't coming from behind him, or from around the slight corner at the entrance to the club. This was coming from directly above him, and it was louder and more terrified than anything he had heard in his life.

John, dazed, looked up. There was a window on the second story, perhaps twenty feet above him, and leaning out of it was a woman with long brown hair and a pretty sequined top. She was braced on the frame, wide, animal-blank eyes scanning the ground as if considering jumping, but she wouldn't do it. Behind her, he could see the flickering laughing lovelies, creeping closer.

She saw him, and something changed in her face. She locked eyes with him, and in that instant, he saw her crumble apart, pieces of her shattering down into the flames.

"Help me! Oh, god, help me! Oh my god, oh god, my boyfriend, he can't—He can't move, something's—Please, you have to help me!" She looked over her shoulder and down, at something below the frame that he couldn't see. John looked down at the flames swirling around his feet, biting his lip. They were so fucking brilliant, and she was just, just—

But then he remembered that he wasn't a monster, not quite a monster, not owned by this, and he stepped closer to the building and lifted his hands. The flames at his feet roared up, then died down and vanished. The woman in the window watched in stunned, dumb confusion as he raised his hands towards her and concentrated, making the fire in the room she was trapped in race in eager looping tendrils past her through the frame to flood down the wall and into John's arms. He cradled the leaping torrent for an instant, savoring the burn and dripping tongues of flame, then reluctantly killed it.

The woman, still staring, let out a funny heaving sound that was almost a laugh, almost a sob.

John angled himself around the corner of the building and shouted,

"There's a girl up there, with someone else! They're hurt!" He pointed to the second floor. A fireman, one of those loathed yellow-suited bastards, nodded at him and charged inside. John stepped backwards until he was leaning against the wall of Finney's Finest, and watched as the woman disappeared from the window and the rest of the flames, very quickly now, were extinguished.

…………

Across from Finney's Finest and the demolished nightclub, the name of which no one had ever been certain about, there was a strip of apartments capped with flat, chimney-studded rooftops. In the shadows between two such chimneys, a man crouched, five fingertips braced against the concrete to maintain balance as he watched the fiasco. Or, to be more accurate, as he watched one particular corner of the fiasco. Eerie, glinting red pupils sparking out of inhuman black corneas dilated, eyes narrowing as he focused on the man who was currently fucking around with _his_ fire.

Remy LeBeau couldn't really care less about the fire. He also didn't mind the part where people weren't being killed. In fact, he felt a twinge of relief when the fire truck arrived and firemen began to shepherd people away from the building. But this fire was a job, a job ordered by his current boss to provide an excuse to destroy certain files being kept in the back room of the club owner's office without raising questions, and the fact that someone was messing with it in such an obvious and uncalled for way… well, it _irked_ him.

And, as Remy tilted his head to watch the slim, unassuming-looking mutant across the street lift his hands and steal down the flames, it began to intrigue him, as well.

It was over in an instant, but what he'd seen was unmistakable: the man caught the flames, held them, and put them out, all without so much as a yelp of pain.

"Un ami de feu, je vois," Remy murmured aloud, eyes sliding across the building to where firemen were now carrying out a young woman and a slightly older man, both coughing badly. "Huh." When he glanced back at the fire-manipulator, the man was gone. Remy's strange eyes flashed to the left, and he saw his quarry ducking into the restaurant next door to the club. Remy smiled. "Il faut que nous reconnaitre propre, Sparky," he whispered, and slipped away.

…………..

After the excitement died down, John sat with Clarissa and Jacky Finney and had a drink. Jacky Finney, still breathing hard and flushed with either the fire or the slap he'd received from one of the girls he'd helped up, gave both his employees beers. Clarissa held hers against her forehead and sighed.

"God, that was awful," she groaned, and cracked open the can. Jacky Finney nodded, but didn't seem to have actually heard her.

"Can't believe she hit me," he muttered, rubbing at his cheek. "Not like I molested her or anything…"

"Well," John said with a shrug, trying to relax the humming energy that had coursed through him since he first saw the flames, "you pulled her out of a fire, mate. Traumatic experiences make people wonky." Clarissa cocked her head at him.

"Doesn't seem to have done _you_ any harm, sir," she pointed out. He grinned at her.

"Maybe I get off on the danger, love," which made her laugh. Jacky Finney shook his head at John, waving a hand.

"Don't go down that road, boyo," he warned sagely. "It'll end in tears."

"Probably," John allowed, and took a moment to concentrate on his beer. After all, he had some very intimate experience with the concept of 'ending in tears'. Not that he'd ever actually cried about his own stupid obsession with things that would invariably burn him, of course. Not a once. The three of them were silent then, not entirely uncomfortable, but not quite willing to fill the silence.

That was when the main entrance of Finney's Finest swung open, and a young man in a long coat over a hooded sweatshirt stepped casually over the threshold. Smoothly, he lifted his chin, slipped off the hood, and surveyed the room.

Clarissa gasped. Jacky Finney breathed an oath that was nearly too low to be heard, and John inhaled sharply as his hand twitched towards his pocket. The stranger, lips curving devilishly beneath his bright, impossible eyes, flicked them a mocking two-fingered salute.

"Bon soir, chere," he called to Clarissa, winking, and Jacky Finney got to his feet violently enough that his chair spun backwards and crashed to the floor. Before he could speak, though, John stood. The stranger must have seen, must have seen him tame the fire. Undercurrents of anxious questions raced through John's mind, feverishly wondering who else, _what_ else saw.

"No," he said, not taking his eyes from the mutant in the doorway. "He's here for me." The taller man grinned widely, rocking back on his heels and spreading his arms with deceptive amicability.

"Oh, good," he purred, crimson pupils narrowing. "It's so nice when they pick these things up right off like that." Jacky Finney came around the table and grabbed John's arm.

"What're you talking about, John?" he asked quietly, not looking away from the stranger. "What's he want with you?"

"He's a mutant," Clarissa said in a harsh, unnecessary whisper. John yanked his arm away and stepped forward, pushing Jacky Finney behind him. The gesture was an oddly protective one, but John didn't see it that way; he wanted to minimize the things distracting him from making sure this smirking demon-eyed mutant did nothing… unexpected.

"Your friend here," the stranger announced smugly, "has some talents of his own." Clarissa stared at John, confused, but Jacky Finney lifted his chin in startled comprehension. John sighed, stuck a hand in his pocket, pulled out his lighter. He knew the other man saw it, knew that the stranger must have seen at least a bit of what he could do, and there was a horribly tense sort of pause. John imagined flicking the lighter, sending a cannonball of flame barreling into the stranger's chest and flaring him up like a scarecrow in a bonfire. He could see it then, in the instant of uncertainty, as clear as day; he felt a barely-perceptible shudder of something like anticipation. Then, the taller man ran a hand through his shaggy auburn hair and the tightness in the air eased.

"The name's LeBeau," he said to John. "I'm known in some circles as Gambit." He glanced at Clarissa. "You, sweetheart, can call me Remy."

"John Layman," John said, swiftly recapturing LeBeau's attention. LeBeau waited, one dark brow cocked smartly. John narrowed his eyes, not trying to fight the undeniable thrill that swept up the knobs of his spine. He grinned, knowing that it was a predator's grin. Once the game was started, after all, he couldn't help but play at least a little. "They call me Pyro." LeBeau let out an easy, appreciative laugh.

"Of course they do, mon ami. And I'm sure that's far more real than that first name you tossed out."

"John, what's that supposed to mean? What's going on?" Clarissa was standing now, and Jacky Finney put a hand on her forearm warningly. John, glancing back at the two of them, couldn't tell if it was a warning against him or LeBeau or them both. He was suddenly impatient with Clarissa, with Jacky Finney, with the whole complicated thing that was happening here.

"What do you want?" he asked LeBeau, who finally seemed prepared to answer the question.

"Just to talk," he said lightly, pure innocence. "And maybe I have a little offer for you, too. A job, tu sais?"

"He already has a job," Jacky Finney broke in, and John wheeled around to stare at him in surprise. Jacky Finney, still holding Clarissa at an angle slightly behind him, met John's gaze. "Johnny, or Pyro, or whoever the hell you are, I don't know what this is about but you've been nothing but a good kid since you came here and I'm not turning my back on you just because of some-" He stopped there, but didn't drop his eyes.

"Thanks, mate," John said, and paused. He had a flash memory of the librarians, one woman who had once given him a sweater, whispering behind his back and then, coldly, going silent. "Really," he added. "But I think this bloke here has some things to say, and they'd probably best be said elsewhere." He looked at LeBeau. LeBeau inclined his head.

"C'mon, Pyro," he said, and John's fingers tightened reflexively around the lighter still in one palm. He hadn't been called that since Ed Bailey's time, and now it brought up memories of smoke and gunshots and, always, flame. LeBeau, eyes glinting wickedly, swept an arm out towards the door in a way that should have been ridiculous, but was instead somehow magnanimous. "Buy you a drink."

And John gave Jacky Finney what may or may not have been a meaningful look (he was not very good at meaningful looks under the best of circumstances, and now his mind was hardly on it), ducked his head at Clarissa, and strode past LeBeau into the dusk.

"Enjoy the night, mes amis," LeBeau called to the humans, cutting a quick bow, and then he too was gone.

…………

They were in a bar several streets down and three blocks up. John wouldn't drink, and so LeBeau just snagged a bottle of some kind of alcohol and sat back against their wooden booth. John wondered if LeBeau was actually of age, since he recalled that the drinking age here was older than in Australia, but said nothing. Instead, he made himself wait for the other man to speak. LeBeau, after a long pull from the bottle, didn't disappoint.

"So you put out fires, hey?" John played with the plastic lighter, tapping it lightly against the table and watching the metal top dance beneath his fingertips. He shrugged.

"Not usually," he said honestly, and glanced up. LeBeau cocked his head, studying him, and John let him take it as he wished.

"Y'know," LeBeau said after a minute, "I set that fire." John wanted to smirk, to nod, to ask how the devil-eyed mutant managed to engulf an entire building in flames all in a single moment, but he just spun the lighter around two fingers and lifted his chin. It didn't really occur to him to ask _why_.

"All right." LeBeau seemed amused at this.

"And then you put it out."

"These things happen," John admitted, a bit sadly because it was true.

"So what else can you do, Johnny?" He wasn't sure if it was a complete change of subject or just a continuation, and he was far less sure if he wanted this Remy LeBeau, this Gambit, to know in detail how his powers worked.

"What can _you_ do, Remy?" he asked instead, aware of the hint of insolence in the question, throwing it back across the table like a tennis ball. LeBeau shrugged and reached for one of the beer-stained drink coasters next to the ketchup bottle that leaned against the wall, holding it neatly between two extended fingers.

"Generally," he said, his Southern accent taking the word from four syllables to three, "I use playing cards. But why waste?" And then he winked at John, and the coaster flared up in crackling magenta waves. John watched, entranced, as LeBeau flipped the coaster up and wove it across the back of his knuckles in a smooth, rhythmic dance, then caught it once again and flicked it towards John. The second it left his hand, inches away from John's face, it exploded with a sharp popping sound. LeBeau grinned, every inch irreverent. "The explosions, o'course, get bigger as they go."

"Uh-huh," John said, scanning the table. There were flecks of what might once have been coaster scattered here and there, but other than those, it was gone without a trace. He thought that perhaps he now understood the all-consuming flames. All LeBeau would have had to do was to blow a few things up and run like hell.

"So, you've seen mine, homme. What's yours?" John scoffed.

"I'm not much for dancing on demand, mate." LeBeau inclined his chin, angling his face into a narrow, crafty shadow.

"So if I, say, set this bar alight, would you dance then?" John stared, trying to read the other man's flickering eyes.

"That a threat?" LeBeau straightened and laughed, all easygoing charm now.

"Now, why would you think a thing like that?" He shook his head, leaning forward across the table. "No, Johnny, I'm not here to fight you. I mentioned a job offer." John made a noncommittal sound, and LeBeau went on. "I'm what you might call a… an independent operator, most of the time. But I signed on a while back with a real powerful type. All kinds of work." He tilted his head. "The club fire, for instance. And our little team has another job lined up over the next month or so, something on a little larger scale. We could use someone like you."

John felt a very distinct wash of déjà-vu.

_"You're just what we're looking for, mate. With your kind of… of gifts, this little job would go off just lovely."_

He blinked, and it was Remy LeBeau's face staring back at him, and none other.

"What kind of a job?" he asked, because he couldn't help the curiosity, even if there was no chance in hell he'd be taking LeBeau up on his offer. No chance at all. LeBeau sat back, taking another pull from the bottle. He wiped the back of one hand across his mouth, and rotated his jaw thoughtfully.

"Extraction," he said then, simply enough. John narrowed his eyes.

"Extraction of _what_, exactly?"

"You don't need to know right now," the other man replied. "What's important is that I can give you $5,000 the minute you agree, and more after the job is done." John felt his own jaw drop a little, and hoped that it wasn't noticeable. He swallowed. Five thousand dollars? In the past two weeks, he'd made barely nine hundred. LeBeau smiled. "All you have to do is say yes, mon ami, and the money's yours. It won't take more than a few weeks of your time. There's traveling, but that'll be covered by my boss. You won't have to sign anything, won't be obligated to stay on with us after this is over… unless you want to, of course."

John allowed himself a few seconds to imagine opening his mouth and saying yes, to imagine being handed five grand with the promise of more.

Then, he allowed himself a few more seconds to remember the sound of sirens and the sick, helpless realization that he'd been left behind, left behind with none of the money, none of the escape routes, and all of the blame.

He shook his head gingerly, tasting regret, sour and old, on his tongue.

"Sorry, mate," he told LeBeau. "But I'm out of that kind of business." LeBeau pointed the neck of his bottle at John and raised his brows.

"Bad experiences with criminals, Johnny?"

"If you call being lied to, set up and cheated 'bad'… No, not at all." LeBeau shook his head.

"Shameful. That kind of scum should be wiped off the face of the earth." John honestly could not tell if he was being sarcastic or not, but decided that it was probably safer to assume that he was. LeBeau's red eyes met his own. "I can tell you right now, though, John, you'd find none of that with us. The man I work for, he's the pinnacle of honor."

"Oh, right, that explains having _you_ around." LeBeau grinned, a quick, crooked sort of smile.

"Well, let me ask you something. The name 'Erik Lensherr' ring a bell?" John flicked his lighter, eyes dropping to the flame, and shook his head. "How about 'Magneto'?"

His thumb slipped off the metal wheel, and the flame vanished. John looked up. LeBeau nodded very slightly.

"We don't do set-ups in the Acolytes," he said. "At least, not to the ones we got working for us."

"Bloody hell," John said lowly. "That's way out of my league, LeBeau, even if I-"

"How about you just say you want in, and I'll decide whether or not I made a mistake coming after you?" Without seeming to move at all, LeBeau suddenly had a thin fan of bills in one hand like a spread of playing cards. Thousand dollar bills. Five of them. John found that he couldn't look away.

Eyes on the money, he said, "No contracts, you said. I can leave whenever the hell I want, and after this thing is over I don't owe you people anything."

"That's right," LeBeau said silkily.

"How much after the job?"

"That's negotiable, based on your usefulness. Anything from, oh, another five thousand to… well, let's just say that's the lowest bar."

John forced his eyes off the money and up to LeBeau's face, and knew in his gut, in the deepest, most basic part of himself, that he was going to make a choice and that it was going to matter.

"Done," he said, and things seemed to shake a little, his body tightening around his soul, and LeBeau held out his free hand and John gripped it. The five thousand dollar bills found their way into his other palm, and John swallowed. LeBeau just smiled, not at all surprised.

"Good," he said, and let go of John's hand to pick up his drink, down it, and push himself to his feet. "You'll hear from me tomorrow." He stepped out of the booth, hands casually in the pockets of his jeans. "Nice doing business with you, Pyro."

And he was gone.

**Reviews, they make the world go 'round!**


	3. Test

**A/N: Yes, it _is_ supposed to be LeBeau. Whoops. :)**

**NEXT CHAPTER- Wanda shows up! Yeah, yeah, finally.**

**-3: TEST-**

That night, back at the Belle Hotel, John slept in boxers and socks and nothing else. He lay awake for a long time first, goosebumps rushing like tiny icicles across the skin of his chest, and watched the graydark smear of ceiling that smoothed itself directly into the air of the room as if there were really no division between them at all.

He woke at dawn, or close to it; as the light changed and the air shifted from black to gray to soft sable gold, his eyes caught the shades beneath their lids and sent silent, invisible messages through his nerves to his brain. Awake, John waited a moment before opening his eyes and allowing it all to be real. He went over what he knew.

The night before, there had been fire. The energy was still inside him, sleeping like a sated dog. And then there had been Remy LeBeau, and five thousand dollars.

Extraction.

John sat up and went to the bathroom, peeling off his socks and stepping out of his boxers and showering just long enough to soak himself through. Then he dressed and sat on the mattress, holding a flame in the palm of one hand and then, absently, bouncing it from finger to finger. A nervous habit, one that he'd thought, optimistically, that he'd beaten down. Apparently not. If he'd had a proper lighter, a Zippo or even a silver metal Bic, he would have flicked the lid to fill the silence. A man's got to work with what he's got, though, after all.

It occurred to him that LeBeau didn't know where he lived, and that he hadn't given a phone number. Then he realized that worrying about something like that was a fairly stupid thing to do, all things considered.

And it wasn't long before he was proved correct, and there came a soft, rapid pattern of knocks at the door.

John stood, swallowing the flame into the skin of his palm, and went to the door. He could hear nothing from the other side, could sense nothing, nothing but the solid wood and the quiet thrum of traffic on the streets and the vibrations in the air that were as natural as the door itself. He put a hand on the cold metal knob and pushed down, pulling the door open. LeBeau stood in the hall, arms folded, chin tilted up. And behind him, there stood a giant.

Or, no, John saw as he took the new man in, just someone very tall and very wide. Brown hair, thick, square face, about three miles of muscle if you laid it all out flat. If he thought the phrase "still a human, though" would have any meaning here, he might have used that. As it was, he just flicked his eyes back to the Cajun.

"Johnny," LeBeau said, jutting the side of his head towards the stranger. "I'd like you to meet a friend of mine. A fellow soldier in the good fight," he added, sardonic as all hell. "This is Piotr Rasputin, but you can call him Pete. Or, as his size suggests, Colossus." The big man nodded at John, very slightly, and John nodded back.

"Are you coming in, or am I going out?" he asked then, sliding his hands into his pockets and feeling the lighter cool and comforting against his fingertips.

"We're going," LeBeau answered, and stepped back to allow John to exit. "Petey and I are going to show you a few things." John untied the sweatshirt he'd wrapped around his waist earlier and shrugged it on, aware of his general grunginess and not really caring.

"You going to tell me what exactly's going on?"

"Yes," Rasputin said, the first time he'd moved since the nod. His voice, while deep, was disarmingly gentle. His face, however, was hard as stale bread.

Once John was out the door, LeBeau reached past him and pulled it closed.

"You got anything valuable in there, homme?"

"Not really. Nothing that anyone would take, anyway." The wallet and the passport were in the back pocket of his jeans, and the only things left were the clothes and the photographs. He felt a brief twinge of anxiety for those, but wasn't about to carry them around like some sort of prepubescent girl.

"Well, lock it and hope for the best," LeBeau said, shrugging. He cocked a brow. "There're plenty of thieves in this city."

"When am I going to be back?" LeBeau shrugged again, and Rasputin leaned closer to John. It wasn't so much of a _movement_ as the _idea_ of a movement, and it still put him on edge, but Rasputin only shot his eyes towards LeBeau and murmured,

"You will want to pay for several nights in advance, I think."

"You two shacking me up?"

"You will have a place to stay." John wondered if he should have brought his duffel bag as they made their way down to the first floor, but then remembered the five grand he was packing. If he needed clothes, he could damn well afford some new ones.

Leaving the hotel, John automatically smoothed over the sounds of the city and focused on the current most important things in his line of vision: the two motorcycles propped against the curb.

"You've got to be joking," he said aloud, and LeBeau just chuckled. "Which one of you blokes is playing my chauffeur, then?"

"That'd be me," LeBeau said, taking the bike by the handle and pulling it upright. "Petey there's too big to fit two."

"Right."

"Don't worry, mon ami, just try not to fall off." He swung a leg over and rocked the bike forward, using one booted heel to knock up the kickstand. John eyed the machine warily, and wondered why in the hell he'd never bothered to play around with a motorcycle back home. Awkwardly, he mounted behind LeBeau and gripped the low side handles along the edge of the seat, trying to figure out exactly where his center of gravity was supposed to be. LeBeau did something John couldn't see, and the bike roared to life.

"Okay," John breathed to himself as LeBeau ducked forwards. "She'll be apples, yeah?" And then they peeled away from the curb and shot ahead, and John barely had time to lean in and hurl one arm around LeBeau's waist to keep himself from flying backwards.

"Y'alright, Johnny?" LeBeau called, and there was a fierce, feral delight in the question. John managed a hoarse affirmative, and then, upon hearing it, realized that he _was_ all right. The wind beat at him like a living thing, wrapping around his face and slapping at the skin until he wasn't sure if he even _had_ skin anymore. It howled across his ears, the humming roar of the engine muting out everything else. He felt less a man than an image, a reflection, a piece of air whipping across the blurred tarmac and metal-spotted asphalt, and it felt good. It felt elemental, and hungry.

He was disappointed when they arrived, after maybe two hours of weaving through traffic and ducking around corners so sharp that the sides of his legs nearly grazed the ground, at what appeared to be a small, neat house well out of the city. Well out of _anything_, actually; before reaching the place they'd gone down at least three miles of unpaved gravelly road that spat chunks of rock up into his face and chest, passing through a narrow corridor of forest the likes of which he'd never seen, being from where he was from.

Rasputin pulled up directly behind them, shooting out a leg to stop the bike as it skidded into a half-circle. He dismounted easily, as did LeBeau, while John was just happy to be able to get off without catching his foot on something and toppling. Once on the ground, he took a moment to regain his sense of balance and to take in the house, scanning from the low porch to the small windows to the brick chimney jutting from the tipped roof.

"This is the big man's lair?" he asked, skeptically. Neither of the Acolytes spoke, but Rasputin took John's elbow and propelled him towards the front door. John stumbled a few steps, then jerked his arm away and strode forwards on his own. The other two followed, LeBeau darting up ahead when they reached the three steps leading up to the porch. He found a small metal box attached to the wall and low to the floor, flipping it open to key in a fairly complicated string of numbers. There was a soft beep, and the front door made a thick clicking noise.

"Apres-vous," LeBeau said to John, straightening into a stand and sweeping out a gracious hand. Slowly, John reached for the doorknob. It turned without a hitch, and the door swung smoothly open.

Inside was a hallway, leading to a set of stairs going up. There was a room on either side of the staircase, both with no doors to close. John walked in, moving in small sets of steps, not quite trusting this. Behind him, Rasputin said something to LeBeau too low for John to make out. He reached the staircase, hearing them enter the foyer. John turned to ask where he was going, and that was when the floor fell out from under him.

The fall was over in seconds, in milliseconds, and it left John with only a sense of sick disorientation before his brain went white with the shock of his landing. He fell hard against a cold, unforgiving floor, quick enough with his reflexes to go to his knees and roll, trying to absorb the wave. Pain still shot through his legs, burning up his ankles to his thighs. On hands and knees, John caught his breath and shook his head, blinking away the unconscious sting of surprised, hurt tears.

It was dark, wherever he'd fallen to. A basement? A cellar, some kind of underground place. No lights, anyway, but for the small square above him where, he assumed now, a panel had opened in the floor to drop him through. He had an instant to be furious, to think something like _Those fucking- _and then something hit him in the stomach with enough force to lift him off the floor. Coming down impossibly hard on his back, the breath knocked completely out of him, John could only gasp and try to inhale before he was hit again, this time in the upper ribs.

"That the best you got, punk?" came a voice from above him, deep and snarling and very, very unpleasant. Another kick, again to the ribs. Something snapped, he thought, an awful muffled sound. John managed a dry cough and then rolled away onto his stomach, not taking the time to wonder what the hell was going on. All instinct now, he shoved himself to his knees, refusing to spare any thought for the screaming pain in his chest. He heard the whistle of air past his face and knew he'd just barely avoided another hit, and lunged backwards with all the strength in his lower legs. He slammed against a wall, used it to force himself to his feet, and finally managed to fumble out his lighter just as a fist, solid as steel, caught him in the side of the face and snapped his head to one side. John flicked the lighter as he stumbled sideways, leaning against the wall for support, tasting blood in his mouth, and felt the familiar burn of the flame licking against his thumb as his hand trembled in the dark. In the instant of silent glow, he saw the outline of a man, not as big as Rasputin but pretty damn hefty, with a mane of coarse, dirty hair. The man, seeing the lighter, curled his upper lip and bared one glinting fang before John, twisting his swelling lips into a painful, grimacing mock-smile of his own, lifted the lighter and thought about agony.

The flame exploded outwards, not writhing around his hands and arms but _eating_ them, eating the air and the dark and, leaping out in one horrible glorious vicious ball of fire, the animal-man, too. Or, it would have, if he hadn't sworn and jumped back just fast enough to avoid being incinerated. As it was, the awful stench of burning hair filled the room. John, Pyro, did not notice.

He was laughing now, laughing through his bloody mouth and swollen cheek and blackening eye, laughing through the piercing stabbing pain in his ribs and the clenching bruise that was his abdomen, the sound of it ripping through the sound of fire until they were one, John and the flames, and the fire was _everywhere_. He fed it himself, his self, fed it until it surrounded him from feet to hair, biting at the empty space in front of him and behind him and around him. The animal-man, standing in a feral half-crouch as if ready to spring from a few yards away, stared at John and seemed, for once, fairly stunned.

"No," John said, and began to stalk forwards. "_This _is the best I got." And he thrust his arms up and his will thrust up with them, sending shrieking ropes of fire out in every direction as John's throat opened into a low rasping cry of effort. The joy was in him, all of him, the base elemental _awe_ of it, and he didn't even care about the man now crouching in one corner of the oubliette swiping at the flames as if he could slit them in two, didn't really care about anything but the godawful lovely heat.

And then, slowly, dazedly, John recognized the sound of shouting. It took another moment for him to register the words.

"John! John! Pyro! Enough! Pyro, _enough_!" LeBeau. Eyes flicking up, John saw the Cajun kneeling at the open panel in the ceiling, staring at him, willing him to stop. The flames chuckled eagerly, wanting to dance up and eat LeBeau, eat him right up to ashes, and John only just told them to wait.

"Why should I?" he called back, through the wall of fire.

"It was a test!" LeBeau shouted, completely ignoring the man in the corner. "Not my idea, mon ami, but a test nonetheless!" Slowly, breathing hard, John understood.

Grudgingly, he even decided that it made sense.

He recalled the flames, coiling them into a tight ball to hover in his palm. Leaning in, breathing them in, inhaling the scent of burn and wild, he let them vanish. Looked up. Met LeBeau's demon gaze.

"Sorry if I scorched your friend," he said, spat blood, and collapsed.

……….

When John opened his eyes, he hurt. That was the first and most important thing he noticed. His face felt fake and hot, the skin stretched too tightly across his bones. His lower lip cracked when he grimaced, and his eye ached when he blinked. Still, his vision seemed fine. He looked around. He was on a bed, in a plain white room. There was a window across from him, looking out on a brownish tree trunk. Light. It was still day, or had he been out a full twenty-four hours? He strongly doubted it.

John sat up, or did his best to sit up, using his elbows to push himself off the mattress. His entire chest, he realized then, was made almost entirely of bruises. He was shirtless, and there was a bandage against the lower half of his ribcage. _Guess the hairy bastard broke a rib after all_. A portion of his stomach, too, was an attractive bluish color. His knees hurt from slamming into the floor, and he decided that he didn't really want to actually _see_ the state of his face.

Still, when he got out of bed (thankfully, John found, he was still wearing his own pants, lighter a familiar weight in his pocket), the first order of business was to find a bathroom. He opened the door to his room, peering into a narrow hallway. The wallpaper seemed to be the same color as in the part of the house he'd seen before, and so John figured he was almost definitely in the same building. There was a door directly across the hall, and when he pushed it carefully open, a small, utilitarian bathroom was revealed.

After he was done, John washed his hands and, steeling himself, faced his own reflection.

One black eye. (The left one.) The bruise went from the left corner of the eye across his cheekbone, fading as it got lower. His mouth didn't look nearly as swollen as it felt, but there was dried blood on his lower lip from where it had split. His jaw wasn't obviously bruised, but it still hurt like hell. All in all, not as bad as he'd feared, but not really great, either. Especially in combination with the bandaged ribs and bruised stomach.

"Should have burned his face off," John muttered, resentfully. "Would have improved his looks."

"Undoubtedly true," came a voice from the doorway. John turned to see LeBeau leaning there, arms folded casually. "But that would have taken longer to heal than one bruised rib."

"I thought broken. Something snapped, anyway."

"Maybe, but whatever it was wasn't your rib. You'll be fine in a day or two."

"Yeah, thanks," John said sarcastically. LeBeau shrugged.

"We all went through it. Magneto don't want weaklings on his team."

"I'm not on his team."

"No," LeBeau agreed, "you're on mine." He eyed John impassively. "And I don't like weaklings, either."

"So who was that ugly bugger, anyway?"

"That was Sabertooth. Real name Creed, but he likes his codename better." LeBeau straightened away from the doorframe. "C'mon, Johnny, I'll give you a shirt and then we can talk business."

**C'mon, you bunch of wankers, leave me something shiny! *cough* Please?**


	4. Wanda

-4: WANDA-

The needle was cold, always cold, biting at her. Impatient. She wanted to tell them to wait, to calm down, to not get so angry with her and hurt her and hurt her and, but it was too late and the darkness was coming again. They were talking around her, above her, like she couldn't hear or understand or know everything they said, and maybe she couldn't. Maybe this was all a dream, maybe this was all nothing, maybe she was all a dream. Maybe they were right and she was crazy and all of this was just misunderstood. All these bad dreams.

When the darkness lifted she was back in her room, on her back, the jacket on (the jacket was always on) so her arms were tight and painful and cramping but that never really mattered to anyone but her and, really, it didn't much matter to her either because she'd discovered centuries ago (or years, or months, or weeks; time was fuzzy here) that thinking about things only made everything worse.

He came after a while, a little later than usual, late enough that the drugs (they were drugs; she understood that, she wasn't _stupid_) had worn off enough for her to feel it when he climbed on and did the things he liked to do when no one else was around. She watched the ceiling, and pretended, and maybe she was crying but that wasn't important because eyes did that naturally, they teared up, it didn't mean she cared about this.

She thought of the brother when he grunted over her. She thought of the father when he put his mouth on her face. She couldn't think of them as hers, couldn't really claim them when there was all this… around them, in her head. Hatred, maybe. Rage. Disbelief, all the emotions she wasn't supposed to feel, which was why they drugged her over and over and over and over. But she could think of them, and take herself out of her body, take herself out of these cold white walls and away from the salty cool water on her face.

After a little bit longer, he left. Closed the door, punched in the code outside. She heard the locking mechanism whirr into place, and closed her eyes.

Everything felt like pain.

When she slept, finally, she dreamed of Pietro holding chocolate milk. Then she dreamed of a car, a black car, flying off the road and exploding before it hit the ground.

When she woke, also finally, she was clear enough to recognize the hate. She was lucid enough to understand the fury. She was alive enough to remember her name.

"Wanda," she said aloud, her raspy torn voice almost hurting her throat as it crawled out of her chest. "Wanda, Wanda," she said again, again, low desperation. She would not forget it. She would not, would not, would not. Repetition was the key.

She said her name until they came to feed her, and when the needle went in, she forgot the world.

.................

Sitting was not the most comfortable of activities, but John managed not to wince as his (not broken, just bruised) ribs twinged on the way down. Across from him sat Rasputin, looking unbelievably unsuited for the small wooden chair he occupied, and the man John had fought. Sabertooth. LeBeau sat on the table itself, idly shuffling a deck of old, worn playing cards. Sabertooth, when John took a seat, let out a noncommittal grunt of acknowledgement, but his eyes burned as they took in John's bruised face.

"So," LeBeau said, breaking the thick, uncomfortable silence. "Boys, you all know Johnny by now. M'sieu Creed, a formal introduction." John nodded slightly across the table. Creed didn't budge. "Now, I want no fights here," LeBeau went on, eying them both. "I'm going to explain to Pyro, here, just what we're about. So if you two could jump in as you like or just keep your mouths shut, that'd be great."

"Don't get too cocky, Gambit," Creed said then, and though his voice was not quite so scornful as in the basement, it was just as rough. "Your authority don't spread that far."

"But Johnny is my recruit," LeBeau countered smoothly, eyes locked on Creed's. "So what I say goes, when it comes to him."

"Just tell him about the job, Remy," Rasputin put in, calm and cool at the foot of the table. Creed's lips tightened, but he said nothing.

"Right," LeBeau agreed, and looked to John. "What we're doing here is a two-part adventure."

"You said something about extraction," John said, leaning back in his chair with a slight frown of pain. He'd managed to forget about the rib. Now he remembered.

"Precisely," LeBeau said, letting the cards in his right hand fall in a smooth tumble to his left. "Part B involves _extracting_ a few billion dollars from a little place called Fort Knox." He allowed a moment for that to sink in.

"And Part A?" John asked, feeling a little distanced from reality. LeBeau's lips twisted thoughtfully.

"Part A… is a little different."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Part A involves a girl," LeBeau told him, and the cards changed hands again. "A very… unique girl."

"Why must you always dance around things that are easier to simply say outright?" Rasputin asked, mildly exasperated. He too looked at John. "We are breaking a young woman out of a mental asylum for the use of her powers."

"What girl?"

"Magneto's daughter," Creed said, gruffly, a cruel sort of enjoyment in his voice. "Wanda." That took a minute to sink in, too.

LeBeau jumped off the table and dropped the cards into one deep coat pocket, ambling around to the refrigerator and pulling out a beer.

"You've got to be joking," John said. LeBeau smiled, just a slant of the mouth.

"She's going to get us into Knox, mon ami, and all we have to do is get _her_ out of Nutsville."

"Magneto has _kids_? And one of them… What can she do, exactly? And what's wrong with her?" He thought about what he knew of Lensherr, number one mutant terrorist of the modern world, and wondered with a sort of subdued horror what it must take to make a man like that toss one of his own mutant children into a human mental asylum.

"We are not sure," Rasputin said, and LeBeau glared at him as John's jaw dropped.

"That ain't true," LeBeau corrected. "We… the details are still a little… But Mags has it all figured out, and what's important is that we get her out without killing her in the process."

"So where do I come in?" John asked, shoving his hands in his pockets and doing his best not to really think about the fact that LeBeau had just announced they would be kidnapping a crazy girl who happened to be the daughter of one of the most dangerous men alive. LeBeau's eyes sparkled gleefully.

"That's the fun part, Johnny, so be patient and we'll get to it." He set down his beer and walked over to the head of the table, slapping his hands down against the wood. "Now, I got blueprints of the place, and schedules. We strike a week from today, after her nighttime meds have been given. It's in and out, boys, no one gets hurt. Got that, Vicky?" Creed snarled.

"Watch your mouth, smartass, or I'll feed it to you."

"Ah, ah, ah," LeBeau tsked, waving a finger. "This is my area of expertise, mon ami, and Boss-man left me in charge." Creed grunted, and for some reason glowered at John, who narrowed his eyes back. "Anyway, remember, the fille is in that joint for a reason. She'll be doped when we take her, but there won't be any chances on that front, and I mean, _any_. Whatever she does, it's scary. Now," he continued in a brighter tone, looking from John to Rasputin with a grin that seemed just a little too devious. "Here's how we're getting in."

................

The orange juice, stuff he hadn't had in years, tasted like heaven. John finished the cup he'd poured and thought pretty seriously about getting another, but just as he got to his feet a hand clapped down on his shoulder. LeBeau spun him around and folded his arms, scanning the artwork that was John's face. The bruises had turned from bright, fresh bluish to a sicker sort of purple, though it had only been a day.

"You look like hell, mon ami."

"Yeah, I know."

"Good thing you had the lighter, eh?" John shrugged, tempted to reach down and take out the item in question, but resisting the urge. LeBeau shook his head. "So what happens when you don't have one, homme?"

"I get killed," John said lightly, tapping his ribs.

"You need to learn to fight, Johnny-boy," LeBeau told him, arms going out for emphasis. "Street fight, box, tai kwon do, anything."

"Tai kwon what?"

"Not important. C'mon." He started for the door. John, dropping the cup to the floor, nearly tripped over the sofa in the living area of the Acolyte house as he followed.

"Hey! Where are we going, a karate class?" He jogged onto the low porch, scanning the lawn. LeBeau was nowhere to be seen. "Hey, what-" An arm hooked around his throat and cut off both the words and the air, another arm snagging both elbows and trapping them behind his back. LeBeau's voice sounded, calm and easygoing as ever, in his ear.

"See how easy that was?"

"Get off me," John snapped, trying to worm his way out of LeBeau's hold.

"Break my grip."

"I'll break your face!" He tried to elbow the taller man, but only succeeded in wrenching his shoulder. "Fuck," John hissed, and then butted his head back as hard as he could. The back of his skull connected with something hard, and LeBeau cursed, but didn't let go. John, still struggling, planted both feet and lunged backwards. They both flew back, LeBeau losing his balance, and crashed to the wooden floor. In the instant of impact, John rolled swiftly to one side and elbowed LeBeau again, this time catching him in the belly. Free, John climbed to his feet as quickly as he could, but LeBeau flipped himself upright so fast that by the time John was ready to swing fists, the Cajun was just out of range.

"Not bad," LeBeau allowed, and the bastard wasn't even breathing hard. "But by the time you carried out that little move, I could have slit your throat about five times over. We're going to have to work on that."

"What do you care, anyway?" John asked, aware of how sullen he sounded, but not really caring. His shoulder still hurt, and he was having trouble getting enough air, and LeBeau still looked perfectly goddamn fine.

"I care because you're my responsibility, Sparky," LeBeau answered evenly. "And if you die 'cause someone kicks your lighter away and leaves you as helpless as a toddler, I will feel very, very bad about it."

"Yeah, sure," John muttered, but shook himself out and beckoned LeBeau towards him. "Ok, let's go." LeBeau just blinked at him. "What?"

"Lesson number one: keep your knees bent. If you're standing straight like that and someone rushes you, you'll go down like a cheap whore." John bent his knees, feeling his center of balance lower, and bounced a little on the balls of his feet.

"You're such a poet."

"Oui. Lesson number two: never make fists with your thumbs on the insides."

"I know that! Everyone knows that!"

"Just making sure."

"I'm not completely useless, you know."

"Uh-huh. Lesson number three: when you fight someone, don't watch their fists. Watch their eyes."

"But I can't see what's coming if I don't-"

"You'll see what they think, what they want, what they're going to do." John scrunched his mouth in distrust, but lifted his gaze to LeBeau's face. "Hit me."

"What, just-"

"Just hit me," LeBeau affirmed, nodding, and _settled_. That was the only word John could think of for it, for the sort of… sinking into himself, readying, becoming something animal. It occurred to him that if he tried to hit Remy LeBeau, he probably would regret it. Under ordinary circumstances, of course. But these weren't ordinary. So he punched the other man, getting in a low, tough hit to the side. LeBeau took it without a sound, swaying back to absorb the shock, and then caught John's wrist, yanked him off-balance and kneed him in the gut. John fell to his knees, one wrist still dangling in LeBeau's grip, the other arm wrapping around his stomach as if that would keep the pain from blossoming across his belly. LeBeau dropped his arm and nudged him in the hip with one booted toe. "Get up and fight me," he said. John shook his head, catching his breath, and pushed himself up. When he was halfway to standing, LeBeau drew back and hit him again, this time right beneath the ribs. John toppled, but managed to catch LeBeau's arm and pull just hard enough to steady himself. Then LeBeau twisted deftly out of his grip and whirled, one leg going out to kick John in the chest and send him slamming into the porch railing.

"Jesus, mate," John gasped.

"Good improv," LeBeau told him, implacable. "Be faster."

"Fuck you, too," John said, but moved away from the railing and bent his knees and stared LeBeau in the eyes. He was angry, now, the pain more numb than anything else, breathing hard but not really present enough to realize it. He could see LeBeau's red eyes, those mocking, unreadable eyes, and that was it and John wanted to beat him, wanted to at least hurt him, wanted-

LeBeau moved; he could see the shifting twitch of lashes and the way the pupils dilated and then the other man was darting through the air but John was faster than he'd been, and lunged to one side. LeBeau went past him and John turned, grabbing LeBeau's elbow and using it as leverage to swing his knee up into the Cajun's back. LeBeau spun, striking out for John's face, and John brought one forearm up to deflect the punch. He pistoned his other fist into LeBeau's stomach and jumped backwards, leaving LeBeau panting, though barely, and grinning.

"Good," LeBeau called, and then came at him again. This time, John wasn't quick enough and LeBeau bowled straight into him, sending him crashing into the railing and flipping him up and over to sprawl on his back on the ground. The breath knocked entirely out of him, John could only stare up at the sky for a moment as LeBeau leaped neatly down from the porch. John could see the other man coming for him, and managed to force himself up, crawling a few feet before scrambling to his feet just in time to avoid a fist in the face. The punch whistled past his chin and brought LeBeau's shoulder right up against John's chest, and John grabbed the other man's head and jerked it down into his knee.

"Merde!" LeBeau gritted out, stumbling back. His nose was bleeding, but he ignored it and, with a single move, swept John's feet out from under him. By the time John was up on his elbows, LeBeau was kneeling over him with one hand around his throat. "Dead," LeBeau told him, but the red eyes were shining with satisfaction and, if John wasn't mistaken, the faintest hint of pride. "Better." Smoothly, LeBeau stood and offered a hand. John hesitated, then gripped the hand and made as if to get up. After rising a few inches off the ground he yanked as hard as he could, and LeBeau toppled to his knees. John used the last dregs of his strength to lean in and shove LeBeau, a move which, largely because LeBeau let him do it, sent the other man onto his back on the ground. John flopped down beside him, closing his eyes as LeBeau laughed out loud.

"You fight like a desperate fourteen-year-old," he said.

"Yeah, well, look whose nose is bloody," John replied, eyes still closed. Opening them, he felt, would take too much effort.

"But even fourteen-year-olds can do damage," LeBeau continued, a little more seriously. "Especially if they get lucky. So even if we only got six days to do it, we're going to make you dangerous."

"Oh, hell..."

"A little more enthusiasm would be nice."

"Oh, _hell_!"

"Merci."

................

When they took her to the hole, she went peacefully enough. It was better that way, if she could manage the restraint. It was better not to fight. She let them shove her down, felt the cold hard concrete against her knees and shins, kept her head lowered to stare at the floor as they set up formation. She knew without having to check that there would be guards at the door at the top of the concrete steps leading down into the hole, and that they would be holding guns trained on her, waiting. She knew without having to check that, as the fifth guard undid the straps of the jacket behind her back, a sixth hovered behind him with another gun pointed at the back of her neck. If she moved, if she did anything, they would shoot her. There was a chance she would be able to disarm all of them before being hit, but it wasn't a chance she particularly wanted to take; they never drugged her before putting her in the hole, so she was lucid enough to realize that the odds were not in her favor.

She waited for the guards to spill back up the steps, waited for the slab of concrete embedded in steel that served as a slanted, leaning door in the tilted ceiling to slam down, before stretching her arms out to the sides. So good. It was so good to move.

When she flexed her fingers, the floor cracked, but only fine lines. It was reinforced enough not to allow for much damage. In the pitch darkness of the hole, she kept her eyes closed. It wouldn't make any difference if they were open, after all.

Wanda spun, wheeling her arms, and screamed. Outside, they would hear only the echo. Inside, she let herself explode, the taut, bound energy inside her bursting out and shaking the walls. Dust drifted against her skin. She felt wild, freed, and sick with the knowledge that outside of herself, nothing had changed. Every time they brought her here, every time they let her get rid of the pent up madness, she felt this relief and the crushing weight of the realization that she was just a girl in a dark, empty room and that, when they decided her time was up, she would be recaptured and redoped and tossed somewhere else, and that this was just a different kind of cage.

After the screaming was done, Wanda collapsed onto the concrete and pressed her palms against the ground, feeling the chill grit against her flesh. She lowered her head, crouching there, and pictured Outside. She couldn't remember much; it came in bursts and flashes, fuzzy sections of memory like old film played on a broken, skipping reel. Cast against the insides of her eyelids, she saw a little boy with silvery hair jumping up and down, laughing, although there was no sound to match the image. There was rarely sound in her memories. She saw herself, miniature girlchild, holding someone's hand and licking at the lollipop in the other. She saw green grass and blue sky, things she knew existed but could barely fathom these days; soft beds and a woman with shining blue eyes holding her very, very close.

It rose in her then, inside that woman's eyes, leaping out and pressing icy mean-tempered kisses to the vulnerable inner corners of her heart: tears pricked in her own eyes and she wanted to give in and break down sobbing, but she forced it back and held it in and knelt there on the cold floor in silence.

"I won't be here forever," she whispered aloud, feeling as alone as a newborn, everything changed. "They can't keep me here forever. Right?"

Wanda in the dark, in the cold, quiet dark. There were no reassurances.


	5. Out

-5:OUT-

"This is unbelievably stupid."

"Don't be like that, mon ami. I think it's very, ah, very becoming." John shot LeBeau a dark look, and adjusted the wig. Behind him, Rasputin grunted, tugging at the collar of his starched white shirt.

"I think this does not fit, Remy," he complained, working a finger between the collar and his throat and rubbing irritably.

"No, it fits. It's not a smock, Pete, it's a dress shirt. They're supposed to do that." Rasputin frowned. John snorted, eying his own reflection.

"Don't whinge, mate; look at _me_."

"What is… 'whinge'?"

"He means 'shut up, you're not the one in the dress'," LeBeau translated helpfully, and John almost elbowed him. Luckily, he managed to restrain himself; jerking his arm back like that probably would have torn the outfit. "Oh, don't be sore, Johnny; you're the thinnest of us, and the one with the least… ah, the least rugged appearance."

"Which is just a nice way of saying I'm the girliest," John snapped, rubbing his chin. Just because he didn't wear a beard, just because he had delicate features… He had to admit, though, the job was well done. If he didn't look twice, he'd think he _was_ a girl. The bobbed red wig was a good touch, and his slender frame kept the fact that he had no feminine curves relatively hidden under the plain women's dress suit LeBeau had purloined. So he could pass as a woman, and with the clipboard in one hand, he could even pass as someone medically inclined.

"This is just to get you in," LeBeau placated him, hands in the air. "I checked; they don't let anyone not the biological sex of the patient examine them. Men can be in the room, but only with the right authorization, and they don't get to touch."

"How 16th century of them."

"It's an _asylum_," LeBeau said. "They get enough accusations of sexual harassment as it is."

"And you have already confirmed our identities?" Rasputin asked, patting at his jacket. He was dressed professionally and clearly uncomfortable with it, but John found it hard to feel any real sympathy.

"Oui. You, Sparky, are a specialist from California; you arranged for this examination nine days ago. You're deaf, and Pete there is your translator. Keep hand motions low and quick in case anyone actually-"

"I know sign language," John interrupted, smugly enough. LeBeau, taken aback, blinked at him once before continuing.

"Well, good, then. I won't even ask. So Pete, all you have to do is say the name 'Helen Summers' and let Johnny show his creds, and they'll take you to a private room. The girl will be drugged and restrained, and there'll be cameras. Disable them, get her free enough to walk or be carried, and wait for my signal. When you hear it, that means Sabertooth and I have cleared your way out. We'll have a car waiting."

"Right," John said, and turned sideways, frowning at the mirror. "D'you think it'll be suspicious that I'm flat?" LeBeau scanned him critically.

"No, I don't think anyone'll make that particular leap of logic. You've got that whole flapper thing going on."

"Gee, thanks." Footsteps thundered up the stairs, and Rasputin, standing in the hallway, turned.

"Victor," he said in noncommittal greeting, and the other man stopped in front of the open bathroom door to take in John and LeBeau. His eyes lingered on John in something like unspeakable disgust.

"You freaks ready yet?" John wanted to say something, but couldn't think of anything biting enough. It was hard to feel threatening in a skirt.

"Let's rock and roll," LeBeau replied for him, managing to grin at Rasputin and sneer at Creed all in the same expression. John made a note to learn how to do that, and grudgingly followed the Acolytes down the stairs to the lower floor of the New York house.

………….

The guard at the gate of the Mulhound Asylum for the Mentally Disabled was very tall, tall enough to have to duck to see out the small window of his booth properly. His brown skin did not set off the lighter brown outfit, and he looked tired, hungry and bored. Rasputin, who was driving the car that John could only assume had been stolen, as it had simply appeared outside of the house two days prior, rested one heavy forearm on the window and leaned towards him.

"I have here Doctor Helen Summers," he said, speaking carefully so the accent would not garble the name. "She is to see Wanda Maximoff for research purposes." The guard, uninterested in the specifics of the matter, straightened inside his box and found a clipboard. He scanned the paper pinned to the board, one finger tracing down the side, then stopped halfway through and nodded.

"From L.A.?"

"Da."

"And you're the interpreter?"

"Da." The guard snickered, making a mark on the list.

"You'd think they could get an interpreter at least speaks English," he said, but not unkindly. Rasputin, his face stony, said nothing. The guard's smile, brief as it was, disappeared. Pinched once again, he handed over a slip of shiny, laminated paper. "Put this on your windshield and drive through. Follow the signs. They'll meet you at the visitor entrance." John, silent in the passenger seat, twisted his head towards the guard as they pulled slowly past the booth and gave him a smile. The guard wasn't looking, and John sat back with a sigh.

"This plan's going to work, right?" he asked quietly, and Rasputin hesitated, then brought his chin down in a sharp nod.

"Remy's plans often do."

"Often?"

"Almost always."

"Great."

"If something goes wrong," Rasputin said then, not looking at John, "we are to retrieve the girl at any cost. Do not concern yourself with… whatever may be in your way." John took a breath through his nose, let it out.

"I'm not killing anybody," he said, scanning the lit drive they were following. It curved around the left-hand corner of the building, leading through a nicely groomed lawn, which they could barely make out in the darkness, to a circular gravel parking lot. "For the record. LeBeau and you fellows, you do whatever you want, but I'm no killer."

"Are you ready?" the other man asked, in lieu of an answer. He pulled up in the gravel circle and parked beneath a tall streetlamp. "You have your clipboard?"

"I do indeed have my clipboard," John confirmed, a hint of sarcasm finding its way into his tone. Rasputin, he had no doubt, didn't notice. "Let's go." He got out of the car, awkward in the skirt, forgetting when he put his legs out that they were constricted by navy fabric, and pushed himself up by the car door. Steady then, John waited for Rasputin to come around the front of the vehicle before tucking his clipboard (convincingly clipped with a sheaf of papers covered in medical terms he knew nothing about) under one arm and, thanking god (or, in this case, Remy LeBeau) for the fact that his shoes were sturdy leather flats and not pumps. John started across the parking lot towards the side entrance, one glass-paneled door above which hung a sign reading 'VISITORS ONLY', and Rasputin fell into step beside him. John bit his tongue until it hurt, stinging salt into his mouth, to remind himself not, under any circumstances, to loose track of himself and speak.

They were greeted at the door by a man in white scrubs, who shook John's hand first and then Rasputin's.

"You're right on time, Dr. Summers," he said, after introducing himself as Doctor Jacob Henney, the floor administrator. "We've got Miss Maximoff all prepped for you; is there anything else you'll be needing?" John, glancing nervously at Rasputin, shook his head before motioning with his hands. _Just for this to work,_ he said, and was relieved when Henney's face didn't change. Neither man understood. Rasputin spoke for him.

"I have everything, thank you," he said, and Henney smiled.

"Excellent. Wanda's one of our most… ah, interesting patients here at Mulhound, as of course you are aware. This is not the first time a specialist has come to examine her," he added proudly, as if the girl were his own successful experiment. John felt a curl of dislike, but merely smiled and motioned some more. _I'm sure they have._

"Thank you for permitting this visit," Rasputin said. Henney nodded and turned, beckoning for them to follow. As they walked, he spoke. Rasputin, obviously quicker to think than his size suggested, began making swift hand motions to John as if translating the other man's words.

"Now, as you were informed, Wanda is a very volatile young woman. She must be constantly sedated, and her hands must not be allowed to move. She has… gifts, you might say. Very exciting gifts, into which I personally have looked a great deal. Don't worry, though; we take very good care of her here, so she hasn't been allowed to harm anyone since her admittance." Henney glanced back at John, who nodded encouragingly and, with a nudge at Rasputin's elbow, signed. _I think you're a slimeball._

"I see," Rasputin translated flatly.

"You are familiar with the practices of dealing with the criminally insane, I presume?" John nodded. Henney waved a hand. "Then you won't be alarmed at our set-up. Miss Maximoff must be restrained during all examinations, even if she has been sedated. As I mentioned, her hands must not be freed at any time, so we keep her straightjacketed most of the day." John, who had never experienced a straightjacket or anything like it, but had seen them on the telly, was vaguely horrified. He signed to Rasputin as they rounded a corner and passed two young men talking quietly over a manila folder. _That how you like it in bed, too, mate?_

"I am relieved to hear it," Rasputin said, and shot a look at John. He might not speak sign language, that look said, but he could tell the redhead wasn't entirely pleased. _So don't fuck up._

They stopped in front of a narrow, unassuming white door. A sign nailed to the top spelled out the words 'Examination Room Three' below a large number 3. Henney gestured to the doorknob.

"I'll check back in one hour," he said smartly, and strode off down the hall as if he actually had someplace to be. John looked at Rasputin, and then, after a pause, opened the door.

Inside, there was a gray metal table covered by a thin white cushion. On it, on her back, was a girl.

John, after the initial shock, hurriedly stepped inside and let Rasputin close the door.

He'd expected… he'd expected a _kid_, he realized, blinking. A little girl, maybe as old as twelve or thirteen. Not… not this.

Wanda Maximoff, unconscious, her hands secured by what looked like steel gloves attached to the table, bound by padded straps at the elbows, shoulders, knees and ankles to the steel, was no little girl. John went forward, lowering his clipboard, and inspected her still face. Eighteen, nineteen, no older than twenty. His age, essentially. His age. Black hair, shaggy and unkempt, tangled around her head and stuck, in static-electricity-induced spider webs, to the table above the top of her skull. Her lashes were very thick against her colorless skin, her full lips barely a shade redder than her cheeks. Her face was odd, almost masculine in its strong, definite lines and the small square of her jaw, but the wide mouth below the big, almond-shaped eyes and the surprisingly elegant nose made her decidedly beautiful. Nothing like he'd expected would come from the likes of Erik Lensherr, though, granted, he'd never really seen the man in any clearer light than the grainy black-and-white of a Wanted poster on a club wall or the TV.

"Come on," Rasputin said, interrupting that particular line of thought. John, almost startled by the sound, quickly snapped himself out of it and set the clipboard down on the small table near the wall. He went across to where a ceiling camera was affixed to one corner of the room and, jumping, swiped at it. He thwacked it hard on one side, knocking its angle off. John tried again, and this time he got a good grip on the camera and, when his weight fell back down, ripped it off the wall. Grinning at Rasputin, John dropped the useless camera and headed back for the table. He reached across the girl on the metal slab and undid the hitching lock on the straps across her torso as Rasputin undid those on her legs, and then hovered over her waist, staring at the glove-like restraints on her hands. They clasped at the wrist, but there was no obvious way to get them off.

"What about these?" he asked, touching the metal and trying to figure out if there was a snap or a lock. They seemed smooth. "Could really use her old man now, eh?"

"No need for that," Rasputin said simply, and reached down from his side of the table. John couldn't see what he was doing, but suddenly he straightened with half of the metal glove in his hands. John's jaw dropped.

"Shit!"

"I am very strong." John just nodded and stepped back, letting Rasputin come around the table and rip apart the second glove. "Now she is free, so we must keep her unconscious until we are out of here."

"She seems pretty, uh, pretty far gone," John said, eying Wanda critically.

"Then we wait." And Rasputin leaned against one wall, arms folded, and did just that.

John, antsy, shoved his hands for his pockets and then remembered that the damn skirt didn't _have_ any pockets. Grimacing, he hunkered down and reached into his left shoe, pulling out the lighter he'd hidden between the side of his foot and the inside of the shoe. He flipped it between his fingers, tapping his thumb against the wheel and trying not to pace. Now that they'd taken out the camera and freed the girl, the adrenaline rush was still making his heart pound, and just keeping still and waiting for LeBeau's signal seemed next to impossible. Happily enough, it turned out that they didn't have long to wait at all.

An explosion rocked the floor, sending John's clipboard flying off the side table he'd haphazardly set it on. Wanda's head lolled to one side, but her eyes stayed closed. Rasputin, steadying himself against the wall, looked at John for one flashing instant before they both burst into action. Rasputin grabbed Wanda, scooping her up easily and holding her bridal style as John readied his lighter and slammed open the door. The hallway was bright with flat ceiling lights, and people were running from John's right towards his left, where the blast had come from. They ignored him as he stepped out of the room, beckoning for Rasputin to follow.

"Which way?" John shouted over the sound of several smaller explosions.

"Right!" Rasputin shouted back, and they started to run. A man caught John's elbow and pointed in the opposite direction.

"Miss, the exit for visitors is that way!"

"I'm going _this_ way," John responded, and shoved the man away. When he was grabbed again, John reacted instinctively and flicked his lighter. The fireball that billowed up to surround his left hand proved an excellent incentive for the doctors and guards hurrying down the hall to steer clear. In fact, as Rasputin pointed him towards a door that led down into a sublevel before ending at a staircase going up and out, spewing them out into the backyard of the asylum, the whole thing seemed to go off perfectly.

There was a car idling on the street in front of them, though there was a medium-height wire mesh fence surrounding the asylum's property. Racing towards it, hearing sirens in the distance, John leaped the fence and waited for Rasputin. The man was tall enough that the fence only hit him mid-chest, but he didn't have nearly the momentum to jump it. Moving fast, Rasputin lifted Wanda, balancing her on both hands, and tipped her over the fence. John caught her awkwardly, stumbling at the sudden heaviness, and had to adjust his grip almost immediately to keep from dropping her altogether. Her dead weight was more than he'd ever had to actually hold at one time, and the fact that she was unconscious only made it more difficult to keep her in his arms without getting the angle wrong and wrenching her neck against his shoulder. Though he did have to admit, it felt pretty damn good to hold a girl like this, even if she had to be drugged for it to happen. Thankfully, Rasputin managed to scale the fence and drop down on the other side before John's lack of upper body strength became painfully apparent. The bigger man took Wanda and, side by side, the two of them ran for the car.

"Get in," Creed said shortly, and Rasputin yanked open the back door of the car to slide inside, barely avoiding smashing Wanda's head against the windowpane. John, reluctant but not daring to hesitate, jumped in beside Creed and just managed to get the door closed before they peeled away from the curb.

"Where's LeBeau?" he asked, swinging around to peer over his shoulder. Rasputin had the girl sprawled half across the seat, half across his lap, and was trying to hold onto her hands. Just in case, John supposed.

"He'll meet up with us back at the base," Creed grunted, driving fast. John didn't pay attention to their route, noting only that it was not the same way they had come, and that they were not being followed. _How the hell was that so easy?_ he wondered to himself, and then figured that he'd better not jinx things by asking.

After his heart rate went down a few beats and his breathing steadied, John tore off the wig and tossed it down to the floorboard beneath his feet. He wiped the back of one hand across his mouth, leaving a dull red smear of lipstick against the skin. Creed snorted, and John curled a lip at him. Then, shaking out his hands and tugging at the collar of the dress suit, John twisted around again and looked into the back seat.

"All's well?"

"I believe so," Rasputin said dubiously. John could barely make them out in the darkness now that the overhead light had gone off, but he could see the gleam of Rasputin's eyes hovering out of the hulking shadow that was his silhouette. "She is still asleep."

"Must be some damn good drugs," John muttered, settling back into his seat. He breathed in, let it out in a sigh, shook his head. He thought of LeBeau, who was stranded back at the asylum. _No, not stranded_, his brain reminded him, _that crazy bastard can take care of himself. _He felt better for the thought, and, really, why was he worrying about LeBeau, anyway? It wasn't like he owed the man anything; the Cajun was the one with the misplaced sense of responsibility, not Johnny Allerdyce.

…………

They reached the house before midnight, but only just. LeBeau wasn't there when John opened the door and stood back to let Rasputin edge sideways across the threshold, Wanda Maximoff cradled like a baby in his oversized arms, and he wasn't there when Creed left at just past one in the morning to inform Magneto of their success. John stayed in the kitchen as Rasputin carried the Maximoff girl up to the second floor, nodding briefly when the Russian informed him that he would make sure Wanda was settled. He poured himself a mug of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, nodding again when Creed grudgingly explained where he was going, and tried to convince himself that he wasn't worried.

And he wasn't, not really. Not the kind of worry you make fun of people for, he was sure; it was nothing quite so tangible as that. It was more of a vague discomfort, like John couldn't quite relax until he was sure the other man was… well, alive, anyway. Downing the coffee, John was a little disgusted with himself, but had to admit it: he liked LeBeau. Despite the bruises and the wig and the make-up, he genuinely liked Gambit. Not very experienced in having actual friends, John was exasperated with the idea that he was concerned about the Cajun, but there it was.

It wasn't until John had had time to shower, pull on some of the sweatpants and one of the too-big jerseys that were in large supply in the upstairs closet of the Acolyte house that the front door beeped and hummed and opened. John and Rasputin, both in the kitchen now, stood and watched as LeBeau first leaned in the doorway with his familiar cocky smile… and then stumbled to his knees.

Rasputin reached him first, getting a hand under the other man's elbow and lifting him, supporting him around the waist and guiding him towards the living room. John, not knowing what to do, just hovered by the sofa as Rasputin lowered LeBeau onto the cushions. He saw that the Cajun was holding one hand to his side, and that that hand (as well as his stomach, and his arm up past the elbow) was dark with blood.

"What the hell happened, mate?" John asked sharply, grabbing one of the couch cushions and pressing it against LeBeau's abdomen. The Cajun slid his hand out from under the pillow and let John lean most of his body weight into it from behind the sofa, his head falling back against the armrest. Eyes closed, LeBeau panted for a moment before speaking.

"Got shot, you moron," he said unevenly. "Hard enough riding back here with my goddamn intestines falling out, so don't take that tone with me."

"You need a hospital," Rasputin told him, no two ways about it.

"Can't," LeBeau replied instantly, wincing. "I'm not exactly a federal unknown." He paused, and John pressed as hard as he could on the pillow. He couldn't be sure, and it might just have been his imagination, but he thought he could feel the cushion soaking through, dampening his palms.

"Jesus," he said aloud, which LeBeau seemed to take personally.

"Please, you had the easy job. It's okay," he continued, closing his eyes again. "I got people on their way. They'll take me to a doctor, one of mine."

"One of your what, personal hospice staff?"

"Remy," Rasputin said quietly, eying the pillow, "has connections." LeBeau gave a weak grin, eyes still closed. His face was very pale beneath the tan, and sweat beaded glassily across his forehead. John's eyes flicked from his chest, which was rising and falling in rapid, shallow succession, to his pallid features.

"They better come quick," was all he said.

And that was when something crashed upstairs.

Rasputin let out a low, guttural curse, and turned to charge towards the staircase. John stepped back from the couch instinctively, legs wanting to carry him after Rasputin, but he jerked back into place almost instantly. He looked down at his hands on the pillow, and saw that he hadn't been imagining things: there was blood oozing up between his fingers.

"How the hell did you even make it back?" he asked LeBeau, in something like horrified awe, eyes not leaving the blood on his palms. It felt hot, and sticky, and unreal.

"Cauterized it with a card," LeBeau grunted, and his voice was much softer now than it had been moments before. "Broke open on the gravel."

"Shit." LeBeau didn't bother with a reply for that.

Something else crashed from the second floor, and John twisted his head around to look. Nerves jumped in his stomach, and for the first time it occurred to him that he was virtually helpless: if he took his hands away from the pillow, there would be no pressure on the wound and LeBeau would bleed out even faster than he already was. If he kept his hands on the pillow, LeBeau would live but John would be unable to fight back if this girl took things badly. And, judging by the sudden angry scream that ripped through the cool, contained air, she was hardly taking them _well_.

John cursed, and bit his lower lip. LeBeau didn't say anything, and when John looked back at his face, his mouth was slack. He was out, for better or for worse.

Then, two things happened almost simultaneously: the front door made its happy beeping hum, and Rasputin came flying down the stairs and into view in the living room doorway. His arms were wrapped around Wanda Maximoff, and they both hit the floor hard enough to shake the walls. Rasputin pushed himself to a sitting position. Wanda did not.

Three people, all in coats similar to the one LeBeau liked to wear and all masked, stepped silently into the room, lightly avoiding the tangled heap that Rasputin and Wanda made in front of the staircase. John, mouth open, stared first at the limp form of the girl on the floor, then at the three strangers. There was a surreal moment of quiet. Then Rasputin touched Wanda's neck, and announced,

"She is alive. Her head, it was hit." The strangers took this opportunity to come around the couch and, moving swiftly and silently, gather LeBeau up as if their arms were some kind of human stretcher.

"We'll keep him safe and bring him back healed," one of the masked figures told John, and it was a woman's voice, heavily accented. He stepped back with a nod, hands falling to his sides as they carried Remy LeBeau out. The door opened. The door closed.

**Thoughts? I'd love to hear them!**


	6. Plot

**-6: PLOT-**

Wanda didn't really know what was going on. She knew she was lying on something soft, which seemed wrong, and that it wasn't nearly as cold as she remembered. She knew, when she opened her eyes, that things were very fuzzy and that then, as they cleared, she could see was somewhere she didn't recognize at all. And, perhaps most importantly, she knew that she was not wearing a straightjacket.

Wanda sat up too fast, and flung a hand out to catch herself against the headboard of the bed as she reeled off the edge. Her fingers slammed against the wood and a small lamp on the bedside table slid off and crashed to the floor, the sound sending a shock of reality through to her dazed brain. Wanda had an instant to wonder whether it had been the force of her hand hitting the headboard or her powers that had knocked over the lamp, and then her smarter side took over and she swung her legs off the bed to stand.

The bed?

Yes, it was a bedroom. Her eyes weren't tricking her. The lamp really was a lamp, now broken (but still lit) on the carpeted floor. There was glory in that, some nameless and indescribable brilliance, and with it came a dull sort of thudding in her ears. Wanda tried to say, _What the hell?_ But her tongue wouldn't quite cooperate, and what came out was a muffled, garbled noise. Something like,

"Haduhng?" And then there was a thunder of footsteps outside the closed door of the room, feet on stairs. Wanda had to stop herself from dropping back onto the bed, and fear whistled up through the veins pulsing in her throat, constricting her air. Fingers twitching anxiously, she barely noticed the hissing short of electricity that flashed the room in the instant before the light bulb in the broken lamp exploded, and she hardly registered the nervous way the bed frame was rattling against the floor. What she did notice was the door, the crack of light beneath it, the way the sliver of bright wood widened and then darkened as someone pushed the door open.

A huge creature stood in the doorway, a man so big she couldn't imagine him even fitting into the room without at least having to duck. For a moment, her heart stopped and her breath froze and she just stared._ (Hands on her, holding her against the mattress, lips hard against hers, big man on top and there's nothing you can do.)_ Then, she opened her mouth and let out a war cry that wasn't so much a word but a hoarse, untamed spit of sound, and rushed at him.

The big man was suddenly not a man at all but something metallic, sheets of silver plating and burning dark eyes, and he caught her in the air as she raised her fists. That was okay, though. She hadn't intended on punching him.

Wanda, both feet off the ground, opened both hands with a low grunt of effort. The metal giant tipped backwards, out of the room, still holding onto her, the joints of his knees, waist and elbows cracking with rust. The ceiling light in the hall blew, shards of glass raining down into her hair. The floor shook as the giant wrenched himself back, and dropped her. Wanda flailed one arm out and the fallen lamp flew across the room, the cord tearing itself away from the wall with another spurt of blue electricity, and hit the human-once-more stranger in the stomach. He doubled over as it smashed to the floor at his feet, and Wanda took the chance to make a run for the stairs. She'd just reached the top step when an unimaginable weight crashed into her from behind, bowling her into the air and sending her flying down, down, and there was a crack! and then dark.

She had the idea that she opened her eyes again, or mostly, and that there was someone looking down at her. Hands on her head, low voices. Then, nothing.

.................

Wanda woke up with a headache. Correction: with the mother of all headaches. Her temples throbbed, her eyes burned, her brain felt like someone had melted it down and poured it into a container far too small.

She also woke up with the distinct memory of being tackled down a staircase, which was undoubtedly the reason for the headache.

She also woke up with her hands immobilized. That, of course, took a minute for Wanda to figure out. It wasn't until she sat up, really, that she noticed the duct tape that wrapped around each hand up to the wrist, rendering her fingers utterly useless. She couldn't even wiggle her thumbs, she discovered, holding her arms up in front of her in dismay. Wanda immediately drew her left hand up to her face and started trying to get a grip on the tape with her teeth, trying to scrape at the edges of the tape towards the top of her wrist.

"Keep that up and we'll tape 'em to your ankles," someone said from her left. Wanda started, and whirled around as best she could from her seated position. There was someone sitting in the corner to the left of the bed, just beyond her peripheral vision. A man, a boy, surely not much older than she herself. In short, the first person her own age she had seen in over twelve years. So Wanda felt justified in taking an instant to stare.

Red hair jutted out over a pale, sharply aristocratic face. Bright, unapologetic, if wary, blue eyes met hers beneath noncommittally raised brows. He was slouched in his chair, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, something small and plastic-looking in the hand propped against the horizontal calf.

She snarled at him, trying to decide what to do. She was helpless without her powers, Wanda knew; thirteen years of no athletic training whatsoever would not serve her well. And with her hands restrained like this, the best she could do if she were lucky enough to catch him off guard would be to… what, smack him across the face? Maybe if she got the angle just right, she could box his ears.

"Who are you? Why did you bring me here?" She settled for angry questions, the hair on the back of her neck tingling with the urge to defend herself. He wasn't the man she'd fought earlier, obviously, but it was just as obvious that they were in this together. Whatever 'this' was.

"I think you're overreacting a tad," he said, and she wondered what the accent was. Thirteen years of living in a cage also tended to make it impossible for you to tell simple little things like that, too, she reflected with resentment. "After all, if it weren't for us, you'd be back in that hellhole."

This was true. It was also true that duct tape was a whole lot better than a straightjacket or drugs. Still, her head throbbed violently and Wanda's glare did not soften.

"What is this, some kind of sick game? You think just because you tape me up, you can play around with me?" He frowned.

"Play around with- aw, no, sheila, don't get the wrong idea! This is business, pure and simple." He got to his feet, and ambled around the bed towards the door. "You stay put, love. I've got to tell someone you're up."

"I'm no zoo animal," Wanda snapped, and slid off the bed. She was still wearing the gray asylum-issue pajamas, and felt less than intimidating, which only made the anger hotter. He was so cavalier, like he had every right to just walk out and leave her in here! He was just like the _doctors_, just like her _father_, just like _all of them_ and Wanda felt the rage spark up beneath her skin until her arms shook and her fingers sweated against the tape.

"Easy," the redhead told her, raising one hand. The one with the plastic thing. Now that she saw it clearly, Wanda could tell what it was: a lighter. Confusion toyed with her fury. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Wait until I get this shit off of me," she said lowly, and was gratified to see his nostrils flare nervously, "and I'll show you what it means to hurt." His eyes narrowed, and he flicked his thumb. Flames curled up from the lighter to snap hungrily at her, dog-shaped, a fiery mastiff hovering above his palm. Wanda, startled, flinched against her will.

"You play nice and so will I," he told her, and the mastiff disappeared. With that, he grabbed the knob, yanked the door open, and was gone. She heard a lock click, and the energy keeping her stiff and at the ready slumped away, leaving her pressing one muzzled hand against her forehead and leaning, dizzy, against a bedpost.

"Oh," she said, more breathed it, and had to sit down.

.....................

John jogged down the stairs to where Rasputin was still trying, without success, to scrub Remy LeBeau's blood out of the couch pillow. The sight of the big man hunched over the kitchen sink with a sponge in one hand and a bottle of stain remover in the other brought a smirk to John's face, as long as he didn't think too hard about why Rasputin was washing the pillow, but he didn't take the time to make a comment on it.

"She's awake," he said simply. Rasputin put the pillow on the counter beside the sink, and rinsed his hands.

"We will have to explain to her what is happening," he said, turning.

"Yeah…"

"She must not know we work for her father," Rasputin added, very seriously. John shrugged.

"Not a problem. I don't."

"The Acolytes, I mean," Rasputin clarified, ignoring John's eyeroll. "We must keep that hidden from her. Everything else, she can be told."

"D'you really think she won't figure it out?" Rasputin raised one brow.

"This girl has been locked away since she was six years old," he said, striding towards the hall. "She has no idea who we are, and knows nothing about the world today. We will lie, and she will not know until the time is right."

"Okay, then," John agreed, wheeling around to follow the other man. Up the stairs, down the hallway, over to the one locked room. "A warning, mate," he said as Rasputin reached for the little sliding lock. "She's pissed as hell."

"We will explain things to her."

"I don't know if that'll work so well. She has some pretty damn good reason for it."

"Then we will impress upon her the necessity of her cooperation." John whistled.

"Don't you talk pretty." Rasputin opened the door, and they both walked in.

Wanda was sitting on the edge of the mattress, her head in her hands, hair covering her lowered face. She looked up when they came in, and for a split second she was completely vulnerable, pieces of her eyes breaking off like shattered glass. Then, she got to her feet and her face hardened into that sneering glare.

"You again," she said to Rasputin, only she was more saying it at him than anything else.

"Miss Maximoff," he said, courteously, and for once his accent worked to his advantage. When John had said the name to himself earlier, it had sounded more like a cough. "My name is Piotr Rasputin." Wanda opened her mouth, and then seemed to force it closed again. She waited, eyes cold as metal in snow. "I am sorry for our previous meeting; I did not intend to harm you."

"Should have maybe thought of that before the tackling," John muttered. He had a flash-memory of the two of them flying down the staircase, and with it came the feeling of sticky blood on his palms.

"John, be quiet," Rasputin told him calmly, not looking away from the black-haired girl before them. "This is John Layman. We brought you from the asylum for a purpose, which I know you are eager to hear. We have a business proposition for you, Miss Maximoff."

………….

Wanda glowered at them, biting at the inside of her lower lip to keep from interrupting with an insult. Every instinct she had was telling her to strike first, ask questions later, but she _couldn't_ strike, and so listening seemed to be her only option. The big one, the Russian with a name like Peter, was acting politely enough considering he'd thrown her down a staircase. The fire-boy, who was called John, just looked distracted.

"I'm not listening to anything until you take this off," she said harshly, holding up her hands.

"Will you attack us if we do?" the redhead asked, eyes snapping back to her face. Now he looked less distracted, and more wary. She remembered threatening him, and briefly regretted being so rash.

"No," Wanda said, after a pause, nearly biting off the word. And she meant it, for the moment. She had enough rationality, now that she was no longer blind with fury, to be aware of several pertinent facts: she had no idea where she was, she had no idea how many others were here, and they had undeniably freed her from the asylum. She supposed that trying to kill them outright was probably not the wisest of moves.

"Give us your word," the Russian said gravely, and Wanda blinked at him. "I do not want to subdue you again." At that, she gave a choppy laugh.

"You won't be so lucky. But if you want to deal, you get this the hell off of me."

"I'm not trusting her goodwill," John remarked, and though he sounded idle, she saw that his left hand was toying with something at his side. The lighter, she expected.

"Fighting us," Rasputin told her, with a quick glance at the younger man, "would not be an intelligent plan." Wanda just held out her hands. Slowly, carefully, the Russian stepped forward and reached into the back pocket of his jeans. He pulled out a small, dark object, and there was a soft swish-click. A blade popped out, and Wanda had to force herself not to flinch away as he worked the knife under the edge of the duct tape on first her right hand, then her left, slicing it gingerly – but efficiently – away. When he was done, she did use her teeth to peel the tape away from her left hand, tears stinging her eyes at the pain, and threw the jumble of tape to the floor before going at her right.

Freed, Wanda took a moment to flex her hands and to watch the sticky, slightly puffy skin become a little less purple. Then, she lifted her head.

"Now talk."

....................

It had been thirteen years since Wanda had taken a shower by herself. Thirteen years of hard, stale, metallic water beating down on her back while someone else, some faceless, nameless woman with tight braids held her under the stream and scrubbed at the nape of her neck. Thirteen years of not understanding, not realizing, not seeing the absolute wonderfulness of tilting your face up into the water and just breathing through the rain.  
_  
This is good_, she thought. _This is what is important right now. _

She wanted to make the water more than what it was, to make it something holy. She wanted the water to wipe away her skin and leave her bare, cleansed, _new_. But even Wanda wasn't quite that powerful, and the water was really only water. Still.

When she was done, she stepped out and dried herself off (again, by herself, another long-forgotten experience), and then pulled on the borrowed sweatpants and a t-shirt. They were too big, and slung low on her hips, and the t-shirt engulfed her to the knee, but they were soft and clean and _different_. Wanda turned to face the sink, pushing her hands against the faucet until water spouted out, and then just watching it hit the basin.

"I can't believe," she began, aloud, meaning to say something else, but found that her throat had no more room for speech.

Wanda left the bathroom and walked downstairs. The boys were in the kitchen, at the large rectangular table shoved up against one wall. They both looked up when she appeared in the door.

"You look a mite less dead," said John. "Though I got to say, they must not have been feeding you very well in there; you're thinner than-"

"You don't want to finish that sentence," Wanda interrupted calmly. John shrugged, and kept forking up eggs. She walked in and, gingerly enough, sat down at the empty end of the table.

"Are you feeling well?" asked Rasputin, who, Wanda was amused to see, looked like maybe he was blushing. "I am sorry we have no clothes to fit you better."

"It's fine," she said, and though her words were short she couldn't quite bring herself to frown at him. There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Then, Rasputin cleared his throat. John looked up at him, brows going down, and the Russian tilted his head very slightly towards Wanda. John blinked, then sighed.

"Breakfast?" he offered. "Sorry."

"Sure," Wanda said slowly, and was a little surprised when John actually stood, found a plate, plunked some eggs and half a bagel down and set it before her. She hesitated, trying not to watch him slump back into his chair. "Thank you," Wanda said after a moment, the words strange in her mouth.

"No worries."

The eggs were _warm_, and faintly peppered, and soft. Unbelievable. The bagel had jam on it, real jam, and Wanda had to close her eyes to eat it. Otherwise, she was terrified that she would see the asylum stone instead of neat cream wallpaper, that this was just a very vivid hallucination and actual food would prove that to her. _You're sick, Wanda. You're not right_. She shook her head, banishing the words, the memory, and finished shoveling down the food. It took her a second to realize that both Piotr and John were staring at her, and she flushed. Wanda thought about defending herself, pointing out the last time she'd had food like this, and then hated herself for even considering it.

"Well?" she asked, putting down her fork. "I want to know what's going on."

"We need your help," the Russian said softly, the voice sounding odd coming from such a massive frame. "You will be compensated, of course, for your trouble. After this job is finished, you will never see us again." Wanda, her eyes on Rasputin, missed the quick glance John shot his companion. Then, the redhead cleared his throat and she looked to him.

"It's in your best interest, really," he said blandly, "to take us up on this. You won't get far with no money, love. Trust me on that."

"Don't call me that," Wanda said, stalling. He was right, of course. She may have spent her formative years in a cell, but even she knew that much. She just… she didn't like feeling _obligated_, like she didn't have a choice…

"What, love?" He grinned at her, with something like relief in his eyes. She had the feeling, ungrounded as it was, that he'd felt just as awkward as she had, and now he was a little more on balance. Not that that meant she would let him get away with it. Wanda blinked, her pinky finger twitching, and his glass cracked. Juice spurted out onto the table, and John let out a mild curse. He didn't look particularly alarmed, which irritated her, but none of that changed the fact that he was still, well… right.

And they had gotten her out of the asylum, after all.

"All right," Wanda said, feeling displaced. "I'll do it." Rasputin cracked a smile, and held out a hand.

"I am glad," he said, his slow, accented voice falling across the table like thick water. _Yes_, Wanda thought. _I'm sure you are._ She shook his hand, as fast as she could. Wanda did not like touching people. When John reached out a hand, she almost flinched, he was so fast. Then, when she moved her own palm towards his and he just slapped hers and retreated, she wasn't sure if she felt grateful or annoyed. It seemed to be a common mixture where this boy was involved, and Wanda was fairly _certain_ that she disapproved of that.

Still.

The deal was done.

**Aaaand you know what to do!**


	7. Friction

A/N: Sorry this chapter is so short, comparatively speaking.

**-7: FRICTION-**

They didn't know how to act around her. She liked that. It made her feel less stupid, less glaringly _off_. The big man, Rasputin (Piotr, her mind supplied, though her tongue still couldn't manage to form the name correctly), was very polite. Frighteningly, offsettingly polite. He had a way of leaving rooms when she walked in, never making it obvious, never uncomfortable, just… happening to slide out of his chair and slip, too silently for a man of his size, out the door. When they were together, he made an art of not saying anything more than was absolutely necessary in a way that, from anyone else, would have been insulting. From Rasputin, it was almost… well, sweet. Shy.

The other one, though… He wasn't shy. What he was, Wanda decided, was- worrisome. Where Rasputin ghosted around on tiptoes and said as little as possible, John made a point of looking up whenever she entered, of keeping his eyes on her, of taking every opportunity to make some quip that she understood was supposed to be funny but which she seldom actually 'got'. He made her edgy, the way he watched her. It wasn't the way the male orderlies sometimes watched her back at the asylum; it wasn't that hot calculating sort of stare. It was sharper, more jittery, like the glints of light in his blue eyes were just jumbling around waiting to slice her if she hit them sideways. He said things like he didn't care about anything, but the eyes never changed. Wanda didn't like it. He looked at her like he knew things.

Or maybe that was just paranoia. Maybe that was just the years of forced madness taking this boy and morphing him into something dangerous.

Or, Wanda thought, as she sat stiffly on the porch and pretended not to notice John idly playing with a pencil on the steps nearby, maybe not.

It had been a day since she'd accepted their offer. A day since she learned what exactly it was that they wanted from her, and a day of trying to figure out how to tell them that she had no fucking clue whether or not she could play her part at all.

Control.

In the years she'd lived as an animal, a kept tiger, Wanda had never put much thought into learning how to actually control her powers well enough to do what she wanted them to do every single time. She'd never had anything to practice on, other than the dark little room they threw her into. It hadn't even occurred to her that one day, she might want to be able to do whatever she wanted. It hadn't even occurred to her that that kind of a day existed, really.

Now, sitting on the wooden slats of the porch with her back against the wall, her eyes on the trees (trees, my god), she felt a little sick.

They wanted her to break them into Fort Knox. She knew what Fort Knox was; there was a doctor a long time ago who had thought that culture would do the inmates good, and had arranged for movie nights every month or so. Classic films. Heists included. But that wasn't the point. The point was that to break into a place like Fort Knox, Wanda would have to make no mistakes. If people got in her way, she would have to take them out without a thought, and she would have to do it in a way that didn't bring the whole damn place down. Getting in would be one thing, and getting out would be another, and there would be the entire in-between… She was good with minor things, with sending her little jolts of electricity out, little hiccups of power that sizzled down in the spaces beneath her fingernails and zapped out into the air. Bigger things, though… They just happened, like the light in the hallway and the lamp flying across the room. They weren't conscious, weren't thought-out or intentional at all.

"Don't think too hard; you'll break something." Lighter Boy, from the steps. Talking loud, but not too loud. Voice smooth, like it meant absolutely nothing to tease Wanda Maximoff. Like it wasn't any kind of a deal to make fun of a girl who could- who could- She thought of the things she could do to him, things she knew she could do to him, and the hint of nausea in her stomach kicked up a notch.

"You should have things to do," she said, disgusted at the awkward way the words came out. She wasn't like Rasputin; English wasn't her second language… It was just hard, hard to say things without taking the time to think through what she wanted them to sound like. She had never been good at that easy, banter-like conversation, not even before the great betrayal. Pietro had been the talker. Wanda, thinking that, had a dizzying flash of memory: she and Pietro, the little twins, the golden children, teaming up to steal a pastry from one of the cooks in her father's house, Pietro distracting the man with some kind of rapid-fire story while Wanda snuck around and slipped the treat up her sleeve. Blinking, Wanda tried not to feel the little bit of devastation that was trying so hard to crawl up into her chest.

"Yeah, probably." It took her a second to remember what she'd said, to piece it together with what he was responding with. He sounded bored, calm, like everything was working out just fine. It made her want to mess things up, which in turn just made her scowl.

"So why aren't you doing them?" It sounded sullen, and she felt her face heat. A few feet over, John glanced at her with a crooked smile, eyes crinkling. It should have been friendly. It wasn't. It wasn't unfriendly, either, just… curious, somehow. Watchful.

"Because I feel like I got run over by a Mac truck," he replied casually, and tilted his head to show off the bruises that were now sort of yellow-green. The beating, or the fall, or whatever it was that had made his face that color (she'd skipped over it before, but today it was hard to miss) must have happened a week or so before.

He waited.

She sighed.

"Well?" She didn't really want to know, but the waiting was so tangible that Wanda felt it on her skin and she didn't want it there. She could always just get up and go inside, avoid the whole thing, but that would be giving in and damn it, she had done enough of that in her life already. So what if he made her uncomfortable? So what if she could feel his eyes on her like actual pins against her cheek?

"My man Remy and I had a tussle," is what he said. Like that explained everything. Like Remy was someone she knew, and like every 'tussle' left you in that kind of shape.

"You're not very smart," Wanda said simply, which seemed to be true. She knew she should just stop talking, because if she kept talking, he would keep talking, but the words came anyway. "You have fire."

"It wasn't that kind of tussle."

"If you fight someone, you should not hold back strengths." This was something she was quite sure of, and Wanda felt a little pleasure at the coldness in her own voice. You should not hold back strengths. I won't, after all, when the time comes. Oh, no, I will not.

John twisted around to face her on the steps, pulling one leg up to prop the foot against the opposite banister while the other draped down the steps. He crossed his arms, looking interested. She cursed herself for saying anything at all.

"This wasn't, like, a fight to the death," he said, tapping the fingers of one hand against the opposite arm.

"Then it should not have happened," Wanda replied immediately. "Fights mean something. They mean you want to hurt the other person, that you need to win. To win, you must use everything you can."

"Dirty fighter, huh?" The phrase meant nothing to her, and Wanda just looked at him. After a moment, John bit his lower lip thoughtfully. "What about practice? What if you're just practicing, and you don't really want to hurt the other guy?"

"Why practice holding yourself back?"

"Practicing just one kind of fighting."

"If you practice, it means you plan on the real thing," she argued, barely noticing that, as she sat up against the wall and frowned at him, her words were coming easier. "And if you're fighting 'to the death', you won't restrict yourself to one style or another. You use everything." John's lips twisted wryly.

"So every fight, every real one, I mean, has to be to the death." It wasn't a question, so she didn't answer. After a pause, his lips quirked again. This time, there was something distinctly mocking in those clear blue eyes. "Is that what you think? Wanda?"

"Yes," she said, fighting another blush at the realization that he'd been waiting for her reply. "It's not worth fighting if you don't intend on killing." He shook his head.

"Remind me never to introduce you to video games." She knew he was making fun of her, yet again, and Wanda wondered if it was really giving up to go inside now. She'd talked to him, after all, and it seemed to her that she had won their little debate. So she got up, and, without another word to the boy on the steps, went in the house.

................

John watched her go, and the slight smile slid off his face as the door closed behind her. He let his head tip back against the porch banister, closing his eyes, and considered.

He wasn't sure what to think of this girl, this Wanda Maximoff. Part of him wanted to treat her like a child, a little girl lost. Then he'd look at her and remember that the kid who got thrown into a mental ward before she was ten years old was gone, and that the girl glaring back at him with eyes like things half-dead was about as innocent as… well, as he was. But then he would make a joke and she wouldn't get it and he'd be reminded that yeah, actually, in a lot of ways she was ridiculously innocent. She'd had no childhood, after all. No teenaged years, no high school, no family. Nothing. And there would be that urge to talk down to her, to forget the fact that she could rip him apart from the inside out with nothing but a flick of the finger… and then she'd go and say something like that, just talk about murder like it was nothing, and his whole perception would be skewed all over again.

He didn't trust her. That was for sure. Who the hell knew what really went on inside that pretty head? The eyes. The eyes were unsettling, too direct. She didn't like looking at people, didn't like holding stares; like a wild animal, it made her skittish. But other times, when she thought he wasn't looking, she'd level her gaze at him and just look, bold as all hell, and damned if he had the slightest idea what she was thinking. After all, John reminded himself, she had spent thirteen years in an asylum. How was it possible to think she'd come out of that fully sane? He remembered the cool snarl in her voice when she'd come down the other morning, the way she'd moved her hand and the glass had just shattered, just like that. It made him nervous, her having that kind of power. It was funny, because LeBeau could do similar things if he wanted but he didn't make John this on-edge. Of course, he wasn't almost certainly half-mad, either.

And then… and then there was the other thing.

She was fucking beautiful.

Not that he had a problem with that, not that he was uneasy around gorgeous women, it was just… it threw him off, made it all the harder to get a solid handle on her. Every time she walked in, he'd look up and realize it all over again. Now that she was clean and her dark hair was brushed, her face scrubbed and at least a little bit healthy-looking, she could have been any young New York babe, the sharp edge to her expression just adding to the look: punk chic, even in sweats and T-shirts. It was the hair, he thought; the hair was, even brushed, shaggy and spiky and looking like Joan Jett from The Runaways. The hair and the eyes. Again with the eyes.

"Get over it, mate," he muttered to himself, annoyed. None of this was important. What was important was that they had her, they had her on board, and soon LeBeau would be back (okay, come on, let him come back; he has to come back, I mean, really) and they would do the job and he would get paid and his life would finally, finally see a little success.

John got up after a moment, and walked indoors. There was no sign of Wanda, but Rasputin was sitting at the kitchen table with a newspaper and a mug of something that looked and smelled like stewed grass.

"What the hell is that?"

"Tea," was the calm reply. A page of the newspaper crinkled as it was turned.

"Well, anyway." He swung himself up onto the table, kicking out a chair to rest his feet upon and leaning forward until his elbows met his knees. Softly, John cleared his throat at the paper. "So what do you think of her? Now that she's all… not trying to kill you?"

Rasputin didn't put the paper down, but he tilted it out to reveal the top half of his serious face. Dark eyes met John's. Rasputin looked as he always did: calm, collected, self-assured. There was no sign that he really felt any way at all on the matter other than the faintest of lines above his nose.

"I think… I think she is very much inside herself," he said at last, confusingly. John frowned.

"Meaning…?"

"Meaning that she has her own… her own agenda," Rasputin clarified after a moment. "And we will not know of it."

"Well, okay, great. Don't we all. I was more shooting for what you thought about… you know, about her being here, with us." John lifted his shoulders in point, and Rasputin let out a quiet puff of air.

"She is a woman. We are not."

"Oh, so that's what that is." Rasputin's lips twitched, and John was pleased to have garnered even that small of a smile.

"I mean to say that I have no experience with living with women," the Russian said. "So I can make no comparisons. Perhaps you know more?"

"Well, it's not like I ran a harem back home," John said, amused. He'd noticed the way Rasputin made sure not to be in the same room as the girl whenever possible, and he'd wondered if it was because of the way she'd rendered him practically… well, impotent, with nothing more than a flick. Now, to find that it was instead because he honestly just did not know how to deal with a female on a regular basis was… pretty damn funny. "And she's not an alien just because she's, well, a she."

"You say this now," Rasputin said darkly, and John laughed. The Russian took it amiably enough, but the barest hint of a flush stained the tops of his cheeks.

"Look, Pete," John said, holding up his hands, his confidence bolstered by Rasputin's helplessness. "Don't worry about it. I'll protect you from the big bad teenaged woman thing."

"Will you?" came the cool, warning voice from behind him in the kitchen doorway. In the instant before John twisted on the table to look, he could have sworn Rasputin smirked.

Wanda was standing in the doorframe, standing in a way that, if it had been John, would have suggested that the hand in the pocket wasn't empty at all and that a thumb was just about ready to flick. Her eyes, crystalline and sharp like broken graphite, skewered him in place.

"What I meant," John adjusted smoothly, "was that…" And that was where his smoothness ran up against the wall of having absolutely no idea how to backtrack. He smiled instead, pointing at her. "You know, your hair is really gorgeous, love." If LeBeau had been there, he'd have chuckled and said something with that mellifluous accent of his, probably something that would have made John sound like a gawky twelve year old. Rasputin just sat there and waited.

"You," Wanda began slowly, "are making fun of me."

"I've been known to do that," John acknowledged. He was startled to see her eyes, usually so shuttered, flicker. The wounded flinch was gone almost as soon as it had appeared, but John felt an odd, upset squeeze in his belly. "But I wasn't just then," he added, his own voice unexpectedly quiet. She said nothing, their eyes locked, and in the silence John felt the air grow heavy and vaguely uncomfortable. Rasputin coughed, and John cleared his throat.

"I'm going for a shower," he said, jumping off the table and strolling past Wanda as casually as he could. He wasn't sure what that strange weightiness was, but he wasn't a huge fan of it. John didn't like confusion, and he didn't like uncertainty. He was a yes/no kind of a guy, even if black/white didn't seem to work out too well when it came to mutants.

Wanda, crossing her arms and closing off her face, didn't bother watching him go.


	8. Return

**-8 Part One: Return-**

There wasn't any sort of big, expansive Event to mark Remy LeBeau's return. Instead, rather than the drama of his rather bloody exit, the man simply appeared in the kitchen one morning four days after the asylum job. He'd slipped in during the night, bypassing the alarm system in such a way that John, who had taken to sleeping on the sofa in the living room in an attempt to avoid early morning confrontations with Wanda over the single upstairs bathroom, hadn't even heard the door open. And John was hardly what you'd call a light sleeper. So when he wandered into the kitchen at 7:50 AM, hair at odds with his skull and recently-unbruised face still wrinkled with the lines imprinted by the couch pillow he'd been plastered against, only to find LeBeau lounging at the head of the table as if he'd never been gone, John had nearly had a heart attack.

"Jesus Christ, mate, some warning'd be nice!" he managed instead of a wheeze, covering the drop of his jaw with an extended yawn. LeBeau, unfooled, gave him that smirky smile and inclined his head in greeting.

"Where would the fun in that be, hey?" John continued into the room, cleared his throat, took a seat opposite the Cajun. As inconspicuously as possible, he inspected LeBeau for obvious signs of bullet holes. The man caught John's eye and spread his arms, the gray fabric of his cheap t-shirt moving over his chest.

"Good as new," he said proudly, then grabbed the hem of his shirt and tugged it up to reveal a nasty looking scar on his abdomen. "Well, almost." Star-shaped, the ugly purplish mark rippled out as if a chunk had been ripped out of LeBeau's chest. John grimaced.

"That's disgusting," he muttered. LeBeau snorted, dropping his shirt.

"Sure it is, but give it some time. Once it goes white, it'll be sexy."

"You keep telling yourself that, mate." Shaking his head, LeBeau leaned forward. Just like that, the mirth left his face and his eyes fixed on John's.

"So, my fiery friend, how are _things_?" The emphasis made it clear as to what—or, rather, who—he was referring.

"Well," John began, and then there came the telltale sound of feet on stairs. Feet far too light and quick to be Rasputin's. John shut his mouth and jerked his head towards the doorway behind him, widening his eyes meaningfully. LeBeau clicked his tongue and put his feet on the table, waiting.

Wanda Maximoff, over the past few days, had settled into a sort of routine. John, who hadn't yet managed to get over the slight worry that if she decided one or both of them were overly irritating, she'd simply raze the house, had been careful to figure out exactly what that routine was. Not that he'd stopped tricking her into a few verbal fencing matches, as that was just too much fun to give up, but he wanted to be sure not to catch her tired, angry or hungry. Two days ago he'd interrupted her washing her face at 6:43 in the morning, and the result had been a cheap plastic toothbrush hitting him hard enough in the upper arm to leave a shallow gash.

Now, he was willing to bet the surprise of his opening the half-closed bathroom door would be nothing to the shock of having some stranger sitting in the kitchen that she'd gradually come to accept as friendly territory.

John almost twisted in his chair when he heard Wanda reach the doorframe. Then he stopped himself, setting his elbows on the table and watching LeBeau's reaction instead. The Cajun's brows went up a fraction, his lips pursing ever so slightly, and John's hackles rose despite himself. LeBeau's alien eyes flicked to John with that freaky way he had of noticing every damn thing that went on, and John fought back a scowl as the other man's mouth twitched with amusement.

"Mademoiselle Maximoff," LeBeau said then, and John went ahead and twisted his torso around to watch the both of them at once. Wanda was standing stock-still in the doorframe, dressed in someone's boxers and a NYU shirt. John frowned. She stole my shorts. Then, his indignation was swallowed by a more important observation: her fingers were twitching, and the floor was maybe just a little bit vibrating.

"Remy LeBeau," Wanda said after a moment, drawing her fingers up into fists. The floor was still.

"At your service, ma chere." To John's surprise, Wanda directed her intensely blue gaze away from LeBeau and towards him, her chin lifting ever so slightly.

"He's with you?" she asked him, as if making sure. Eyes narrowing a hint, John gave a short nod. Wanda hesitated, and then entered the room fully. She came around the table and took a seat in the middle of one side of the table, just barely closer to John than to LeBeau. Ordinarily he might have been smug, but he had the feeling that this was simply because she knew him.

"Where have you been?" Wanda asked LeBeau bluntly, the full force of her attention now on him once again. LeBeau seemed to take this in stride, as he did virtually all things.

"Getting my stomach sewn up," he replied easily.

"Why?"

"There was a bullet in it."

"Not anymore?" The question had none of the concern another woman may have shown. Instead, John noted, it was clinical and calculating, like a predator assessing its prey. LeBeau shook his head.

"Got a real pretty scar, though. Want to see?"

"Don't show her that, you dipstick," John interrupted with exasperation. Wanda glanced at him, and he shrugged. "It's not actually pretty," he explained.

"So," LeBeau said loudly, reclaiming the conversation and the girl's attention. "I take it you've been told of our little quest?"

"You want me to break you into Fort Knox." LeBeau coughed, then winced, touching the tips of two fingers to the spot on his abdomen where, beneath the light shirt, he'd been bleeding out just a few short days before.

"Well, all right, then. No dancing around here." John smiled a little. Wanda just waited. After a moment, LeBeau went on. "So where's Petey? Y'all haven't driven him off, now, have you?"

"Not for lack of trying," John allowed with a slight grin. "The girl has him scared silly."

"Is that so?" LeBeau looked at Wanda in a friendly sort of way, and two spots of red appeared high on her cheekbones. John rolled his eyes, and then went ahead and shouted for the Russian.

It wasn't until Rasputin was downstairs and seated that LeBeau sat back with a sigh.

"Now that we're all here," he began, and then stopped. "I guess it's safe to assume that Creed ain't in residence?"

"He has not returned," Rasputin said with a nod.

"Good. He's probably still in Antarctica. That means we got a few more days before we're expected to get on with the big job."

"Meaning there's a smaller job?" John asked, tilting his chair back to balance on the two rear legs. LeBeau pointed a finger Wanda's way.

"I want to give this one a little experience in our way of doing things. And I want to see if, how shall I put this? If our working together is indeed fated." John sighed.

"You know, mate, things would go a whole lot easier if you didn't waste time with talking pretty."

"I've heard that," LeBeau said with a shrug. "Never did pay attention, though."

"So what is this job?" Rasputin asked, his huge frame creaking the table as he leaned on it.

"Well," LeBeau said, glancing from Piotr to Wanda to John, "we're all up for a little illegality, non? Because being a supervillain doesn't exactly come with a pension plan. Sometimes you just have to take the initiative."

"We robbing a bank?" John asked, a familiar and unwelcome knot of nerves circling his gut. He remembered the last time he'd been in a bank, and forced away the sense memory of the stench of human fear and the metallic sound of boots on steel, guns clicking as the safeties were flicked off. In the light kitchen of the Acolyte house, he told his heartbeat not to bother picking up speed. Remy LeBeau, he reminded himself once again, was not Ed Bailey. This heist was not that one. No one would mess up, no one would turn traitor, and no one would die.

"We are indeed robbing a bank," LeBeau declared. "Just to get used to the idea."

"It would be better," Wanda said then, to everyone's surprise, "if we did this at night." All eyes turned to her.

"Easier to get money out during the day, but easier not to get caught at night," LeBeau replied thoughtfully.

"There are fewer people there when it's not daytime," Wanda corrected. A dark look passed over her face, her eyes dropping to the table. "That's less people to get hurt." John's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing and let LeBeau field that one.

"True enough," the Cajun said simply. "We're not occupying the place, though, just cleaning it out. So hopefully no one'll get hurt at all. What I've got is blueprints, lockpicks and expertise. What you all've got is eyes and firepower. This is a tagteam job, so I'm going in with the lady while you two keep watch and stop anyone who comes from getting in. We'll disable the cameras, and Wanda, you'll show me what you can do."


End file.
